Terms, Conditions and Privacy Statement
Contents
- About us
- Community forum rules
- Moderation
- Submission of contributions
- Content standards
- Notes on the use of the forum and contents of posts
- Copyright
- Breach of these rules
- Contacting us
- Privacy statement and policy
Welcome to the British Genealogy forums
The forums are provided to the public free, for enjoyment, education and discussion and we are sure you will find your use of the forums informative and enjoyable.
Think of ‘a forum’ as being a discussion between people having common interests at a meeting in the administrator's own home. You are a guest and must behave with courtesy at all times.
This forum operates all of the following guidelines and rules to ensure that all of our guests enjoy their experience with British Genealogy.
It is accepted that sometimes there may be heated discussions where people may disagree, but please behave responsibly.
In the event of a user not adhering to reasonable standards of courtesy then threads and posts may be deleted without warning and the user banned permanently.
The Moderators and Administrators decision on such matters will be considered final.
If you want to post a further query about a person/topic for which there is already a thread, either continue in the same thread or else provide a link to your first thread to avoid duplication of research by people willing to assist you. Failure to do so can confuse users and alienate people who want to assist you.
1. About Us
This website www.british-genealogy.com is owned and operated by Clever Digit Media Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 04381547 and with our registered office at New Hall, Market Place, Melksham, Wiltshire, SN12 6EX.
2. Community Forum Rules
These rules (Rules) set out the terms for use of the Community Forum (the Forum), which apply to all members and replace the former ‘Acceptable Use Policy, privacy policy and terms’.
The forum is part of our website www.british-genealogy.com and these rules are duplicated there under ‘terms’.
Any submission of material by you to the Forum means that you accept, and agree to abide by, all the terms and conditions of these Rules.
3. Moderation
The forum is moderated by volunteers giving up their own valuable time and for whom genealogy is a passion!
You must be aware, as a contributor to a forum that you accept the rules set herein and to abide by them and accept the administrator's enforcement of them.
As a user you may not post messages on the forums that attempt to do the administrator's/moderator's job, or to impose these or other rules.
Although the Forum is moderated, we are under no obligation to you or any other person to oversee, monitor or moderate the Forum and we may stop monitoring the Forum at any time. We will not be responsible as author, editor or publisher of any contribution submitted to the Forum (Contribution) and we expressly exclude our liability for any loss or damage arising from the use of the Forum by any person in contravention of these Rules. We reserve the right to promptly remove, or to disable access to, any contribution which we deem to be potentially defamatory of any person, unlawful or in violation of any third-party rights.
4. Submission of contributions
To add a Contribution to a discussion, carry out the following:
- Ensure you are logged into your account.
- Click on the button labelled “Reply to Thread” in the top left of the page showing the discussion you would like to respond to.
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Enter your reply in the “Quick Reply” box provided.
- For advanced settings please click on “Go Advanced” below the Quick Reply box.
- Advanced settings allow you to set a title for your post and add additional formatting such as Bold or Italics text, hyperlinks and images.
- From the Advanced Reply page you can also preview your post by clicking on the button labelled “Preview Post” below the reply box.
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Click on the button labelled “Post Quick Reply” to add your post to the discussion thread.
- This button is labelled “Submit Reply” in the Advanced Reply page. There is no limit to the length of a Contribution.
If you would like to start a new thread for discussion, please ensure you are logged in to your account and then:
- Click on the button labelled “Post New Thread” in the top left of the forum section you would like to post in.
- Enter a title for your post relevant to your subject.
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Enter your post content in the large box provided.
- Formatting options for bold and italics text, hyperlinks and images can be found at the top of this box.
- If desired set a post icon.
- Additional options can be set below the “Submit Thread” buttons. These include toggles to display your profile’s forum signature and disable ‘smilies’ as well as options for establishing a poll.
- Once happy with your post you can preview it by clicking the button labelled “Preview Post” found below the reply box and below the additional options menu.
- If you do not wish to preview your post you can immediately submit it by clicking on the “Submit New Thread” button.
5. Content standards
These content standards (Content Standards) apply to each part of a Contribution as well as to its whole.
6. Notes on the use of the forum and contents of posts
- Each Forum has a specific "topic".
- You are not permitted to post details of anyone who you know (or suspect) to be still living.
- Please do not register more than once.
- If you have forgotten your User Name or Password, use the 'Contact Us' form at the bottom of the page.
- Duplicate memberships will be deleted.
- Posting of the same message to more than one forum is not allowed as it clutters the board and causes confusion.
- Duplicate posts will be removed.
- Keep on ‘topic’ – please don’t allow posts to be made (or replied to) that go ‘off topic’, this is a genealogy forum and all posts must be with genealogical research uppermost in mind.
- Virus announcements and discussion of viruses is strictly prohibited except in the relevant forum specifically for that purpose.
- Recommendations for ‘signatures’ can only be made to the Administrator by Moderators. A signature option is awarded for forum users who make an outstanding contribution over regular use.
- You may not post links to any other website or to information contained on any other website except where that website is a government repository such as The National Archives.
The Content Standards must be complied with in spirit as well as to the letter. We will determine, in our discretion, whether a Contribution breaches the Content Standards.
A Contribution must:
- be accurate (where it states facts);
- be genuinely held (where it states opinions);
- comply with the law applicable in England and Wales and in any country from which it is posted; and
- be relevant.
A Contribution must not:
- be defamatory of any person;
- be obscene, offensive, hateful or inflammatory;
- promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age;
- disclose the personal data in respect of any individual;
- infringe any copyright, database right or trade mark of any other person;
- breach any legal duty owed to a third party, such as a contractual duty or a duty of confidence;
- be in contempt of court;
- be likely to harass, upset, embarrass, alarm or annoy any other person;
- impersonate any person, or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person;
- give the impression that the Contribution emanates from us if this is not the case;
- advocate, promote or incite any third party to commit, or assist any unlawful or criminal act;
- contain a statement which you know or believe, or have reasonable grounds for believing, that members of the public to whom the statement is, or is to be, published are likely to understand as a direct or indirect encouragement or other inducement to the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism; or
- contain any advertising, surveys or promote any services or web links to other sites.
Permission can be sought from Administrators and Moderators to post links to sites with useful and relevant resource to the topic being discussed.
7. Copyright
By submitting a Contribution to the Forum, you agree to grant us a non-exclusive licence to use that Contribution.
Although you will still own the copyright in your Contribution, we will have the right to freely use, edit, alter, reproduce, publish and/or distribute the material contained in your Contribution. This licence will be free of charge, perpetual and capable of sub-licence. We may exercise all copyright and publicity rights in the material contained in your Contribution in all jurisdictions, to their full extent and for the full period for which any such rights exist in that material.
Please also note that, in accordance with the Content Standards, you must ensure that your Contribution does not infringe any copyright, database right or trade mark of any other person. By submitting your Contribution to the Forum, you are warranting that you have the right to grant us the non-exclusive copyright licence described above.
If you are not in a position to grant such a licence to us, please do not submit the Contribution to the Forum.
'Lookups'
For the avoidance of doubt -this forum strictly forbids users to advertise or solicit ‘lookups’ from copyrighted work held elsewhere.
It is allowed and encouraged (subject to the copyright of the author and licence of the product publisher) to help others on the forums with their specific family history problems and queries by using or quoting a limited amount of material from published sources; and in such cases, you should always refer to the original source in your text.
8. Breach of these rules
When we consider that a breach of the Content Standards has occurred, we may at our discretion take such action as we deem appropriate. Failure to comply with these Rules constitutes a material breach of the terms of use on which you are permitted to use the Community Forum, and may result in our taking all or any of the following actions:
- immediate, temporary or permanent withdrawal of your right to use the Community Forum;
- immediate, temporary or permanent removal of any Contribution already posted on the Community Forum;
- issue of a warning to you;
- legal proceedings against you for reimbursement of all costs on an indemnity basis (including, but not limited to, reasonable administrative and legal costs) resulting from the breach;
We exclude our liability for all action we may take in response to breaches of these Rules. The actions described above are not limited, and we may take any other action we reasonably deem appropriate.
9. 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: [email protected]
Post:
Data Protection Officer
Clever Digit Media Ltd
New Hall
Market Place
Melksham
Wiltshire
SN12 6EX
10. Privacy statement and policy
At British Genealogy we take your privacy seriously. We are dedicated to looking after your Personal Information in ways that you feel are completely safe and secure, processing it in a responsible manner and complying with relevant data protection laws.
When it comes to your privacy, we will follow these principles:
Simple. We want to make it simple for you to understand how we use your personal data. We aim to use easy to understand the language to describe our privacy policy and processes to help you make informed choices.
Open. We want to be transparent about the personal information we collect, why we collect it and how we process it.
Easy to 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.
10.1. Information collection and use
Clever Digit Media Ltd is committed to protecting your privacy. We strictly adhere to the requirements of the data protection legislation in the UK/EU and we are a registered Data Controller - Register number Z7564097.
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 [email protected] or by post to Data Protection Officer, Clever Digit Media Ltd, New Hall, Market Place, Melksham, Wiltshire, SN12 6EX.
Our VAT number is 811538154.
Information we collect about you
When you register on our website, we collect your name and email address. This allows us to accept and deal with your registration and send you important service messages.
We collect some information from cookies and similar software which allows us to understand how you arrive on our websites, how you use and navigate and interact with our emails and website.
This information is used to improve our services, design webpages and ensure specific relevant communication to match your needs. We obtain some information from Google Analytics also.
Information you provide to us
Your information is always totally secure with us.
If you create an account with us we will only collect that information which is essential to you having an account with us, this will consist of:
Registered name, email address (and, where applicable -IP address only).
Interests
Location
Surnames being researched
We do not collect sensitive information (also known as special categories of information) about you and only retain information for the purpose of fulfilling our contractual and legal obligations with you.
10.2. How we use your information
We use your personal information for a number of purposes including
- To manage the website (including your account);
- To verify that you have a genuine reason for joining the forum (to detect spammers)
- 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.
- To make you special offers or/and selected promotions which may be of interest.
- For administration purposes. E.g. to contact you regarding goods or services ordered, 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 your 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.
- We use IP addresses and device identifiers to identify the location of users, to establish the number of visits from different countries and to personalise content and emails and to fulfil any obligations we have under the EU VAT allocation regulations, where applicable.
- For analysis and research to improve our services and goods offered where applicable.
- To provide personalised communications (more details below).
- Where we provide personalised services, we may analyse the information you supply, as well as your activity on our services, so we can offer a much more relevant service to you.
- To show you relevant advertising on third-party sites (e.g. Facebook and Google). Some third-party sites allow you to request not to see messages from specific advertisers.
Types of messages
Service messages
We send service emails to you to administer the service.
Service emails include registration and emails that provide useful information about how to use a service or feature when you sign up or start using the website. We may also send you a service email if we make a fundamental change to the website, or to our terms and conditions that we think we need to make you aware of, or to let you know important information about your account.
Because these are essential to the provision of the websites service these cannot be switched off.
Marketing messages
We do not send marketing messages of any type.
10.3. What legal basis are we processing the data under?
There are a number of grounds we process your data under. 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 Clever Digit Media’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.
- Consent – where you have given us consent to market to you.
10.4. Sharing your information with third parties
In the case of additional services and provision of certain goods, we may from time to time have to provide your personal information to third parties for the purposes of providing you with those specific goods/services.
These third-party providers include payment processors and providers of card validation services, delivery services (where physical goods are to be sent only) and targeted advertisers.
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.
We will disclose your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, but only after we have verified the requestor is legally entitled to ask for such.
10.5. Sale of the Business
In the event that we undergo re-organisation or are sold to a third party, you agree that any personal information we hold about you may be transferred to that re-organised entity or third party.
10.6. Cookies
This website uses cookies.
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.
The following explanation is provided for why this data is collected:
Cookies are used to track visitors to our site so we can better understand what portions of our site best serve you.
Cookies are a technology which can be used to provide you with tailored information from a website. A cookie is a piece of data that a website can send to your browser, which may then be saved on your computer. You can configure your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie, giving you the chance to decide whether to accept it.
Group "Cookies"
At the user's option, we will collect the following data:
- HTTP cookies
This data will be used for the following purposes:
- Research and development.
- One-time tailoring.
This data will be used by ourselves and our agents.
10.7. How we protect your information
We follow very strict security procedures in the storage and disclosure of information which you have given us, to prevent unauthorised access to, and loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information in accordance with UK data protection legislation. These include firewalls, encryption of data and virus-checking procedures.
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 [email protected]p>
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 completely when you have finished your session.
10.8. Your rights regarding your Personal Information
Under Data Protection law, you have a number of rights with respect to your personal information, which are:
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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 ‘Your Profile’ page or by sending us an email to [email protected]
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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 ‘Your profile’. You can also email to [email protected]
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 the support team here:
and logging into your registered account.
You must log into your registered account in order for us to verify the person asking for your personal information is you and therefore legally entitled to request and receive such.
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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 [email protected] from the email address attached to your account, providing the full name and email address attached to your account.
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Data Portability
You have the right to ask us to transfer the personal information that you have given us to another controller.
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Restricting Processing
You can request a restriction on the processing of your data in some limited circumstances.
E.g. data accuracy
You can do this by contacting the support team here:
and logging into your account, providing the full name attached to your account.
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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 [email protected]
or by post to
Data Protection Officer, Clever Digit Media Ltd, New Hall, Market Place, Melksham, Wiltshire, SN12 6EX.
10.9. Right of complaint to the Regulator for Data Protection
The data protection laws in the UK are regulated and enforced by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Each individual has the right to raise a concern/complaint to the ICO if they have any concerns about how their personal information and/or privacy is treated. You can do this via the ICO’s website ico.org.uk/concerns, follow the links or have an online Live Chat.
Call the ICO helpline on 0303 123 1113
Email [email protected]
Postal address:
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
10.10. 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 six years and you are no longer paying for a service, we reserve the right to delete any information you have provided to us.
We may send an email to the address attached to your account before deleting the account in case you wish to retain your account with us.
10.11. Links to third-party websites
Our website contains links to other websites belonging to third parties which are not covered by this privacy policy. If you want to go through to a third-party website, please make sure that you read the privacy policy for that website.
10.12. Updates to this policy
We may update this policy at any time without notice.
Privacy statement last updated 17th December 2019.