Privacy Policy

• Names and Relationships
• Photographs
• Personal Data Suppression
• Personal Data Access
• Personal Data Security
• Restrictions
• Disclaimers

Privacy Policy

The primary objective in genealogy is to identify all ancestors and descendants in a particular family tree and to collect personal data on them. As a minimum, these data include the individual's name and the date/location of birth, marriage, and death. In order to support research by other genealogists, the data are often published on internet genealogy websites.

As a genealogist, therefore, I may have collected much personal information on you and your family from a variety of sources. The privacy of this information is important to me and I assure you there is a privacy policy in place for the Jones & Hyman Genealogy website with which you will be satisfied.

Most of us would prefer not to have to worry about our personal data but, in this day and age, we must use caution to prevent misuse of the information. Identity theft and credit fraud are the worst problems. There is concern that information distributed to distant relatives or put on a genealogy website makes it easier for unscrupulous individuals to commit invasions of privacy or other frauds. However, the personal information that the identity thieves and credit fraud perpetrators want are full names, social security numbers, dates and places of birth, current occupation/employment data, and bank/credit card account numbers. One or two facts alone (e.g., your name and/or your mother's maiden name) are not enough information to cause damage.

Names and Relationships

Many genealogy programs can suppress the names of living individuals and substitute "living" or "still living". I have designed this website so that it suppresses the full names of living individuals. If you are aware that someone is living and their full name is shown here, please let me know, so I can remedy the situation.

Note: Only individuals who have registered with our website and are logged in to the site will be able to view information on living individuals. This will sometimes be restricted to only their branch of their family.

Photographs

Photographs of living individuals are considered personal data and are normally suppressed. However, if the individual so chooses, a photograph can be tagged as "always visible". Before any photograph can be included in this website, permission is obtained from the owner of a photograph. Where, for any reason, all reasonable steps have been exhausted and the original owner cannot be found or contacted, any legitimate objection to the display of the photograph will result in immediate removal from the site until such objection can be addressed. Permission is also obtained from living individuals in a photograph if,

• they are identified in the caption/description or
• they can be identified through deductive reasoning using names/relationships found elsewhere.

The statements, "Photo Courtesy of.." and/or "Used with Permission" (or similar), combined with the owner's name identifies compliance with these requirements.

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Personal Data Suppression

By default, individuals in our genealogy database are considered to be 'living' if we have no death date and they were born 100 years or less before the present date. To ensure the privacy of such 'living' individuals, our internet genealogy website always suppresses their personal data from viewing by the general public. Personal data includes, but is not limited to, birth/marriage dates/locations, photographs, notes, and biographies. Note: If a relative does not want their personal data to reside in a website server database in spite of password protection, that individual and linked descendants can not be accommodated by the security program. They will reluctantly have to be completely excluded from the website.

Personal Data Access

Personal data access is restricted to registered family members who must login to access the normally suppressed personal data of living individuals. At the discretion of the site owner (Donna and I), access may be restricted to their own family branch only. You must first read our Privacy Policy, agree with the Terms of Use, and register for a user account. When registering for your user account, you must indicate how you are related to an individual already in our database. If you are not related, you will not normally be granted a user account unless a very special reason is identified. In this case, a temporary or time-limited account can be made available. With registration, you may only be granted access to your unique family branch within our database.

Your access may, in some circumstances, be restricted to:

Note: To see the personal data of a spouse's family branch, married users may have to log in with their spouse's user name and password. If any family branch individual does not want their suppressed personal data accessed, the security design allows a "lock" to be put on their data. This does, however, preclude registration of that individual. Spouse's may need an ID to access their family line and, if spouses are not comfortable in using each other's ID's then, a user may need to request a 2nd ID in order to be able to view their spouse's living cousins. If you consider using your spouse's user ID a security violation, please request a second login account that will be restricted to your spouse's family.

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Personal Data Security

Personal information collected by me in trust (email/street addresses, phone numbers, etc.) or as a result of an application for membership, a suggestion/comment, or from our visitors guestbook, will not be divulged to any person or entity for any purpose whatsoever unless we are legally bound to prevent or detect a crime. You should be aware, however, that much of this information is already in the public domain and may be readily available to others using internet search engines (e.g., Yahoo People Search, Google.com, Birthday.com).

Restrictions

By using this site, you agree to the following terms of use and any changes thereto:

• The Website is for the personal use of the family members listed herein. Use by others is limited to the purpose of genealogical research. The content of this site can not be used for any sort of unsolicited mail or commercial purposes.
• Family members must not share their user name and password with anyone except their current spouse and minor children. They also agree not to share personal data of family members accessible through use of that password without the express permission of the individuals concerned. Members accounts will be terminated immediately if log-in information is passed to an unconnected third party, or if any abuse of privilege is identified.
  
• Individual images may be copied by family members for their personal use. General distribution, including use on other websites, is prohibited by copyright law unless permission is obtained from the owner of the photo, living individuals in the photo (if identifiable), and the site owner.
  
• Biographies and documents may be copied by family members for their personal use. General distribution (including use on other websites) is prohibited by copyright law unless permission is obtained from the site owner.
  
• In the event of permitted copying or distribution of copyrighted material, no changes in, or deletion of, author attribution or copyright notice shall be made. You acknowledge that you do not acquire any ownership rights by downloading copyrighted material.
  
• You agree to give appropriate credit for any material from this website that you use in a written document, genealogical database, or website of your own. You agree to include a link to our site on any genealogical web page of yours that makes use of the content on this site.
  
• Guest accounts have read-only access.
  
• The IP address of any access to this website is always logged.
  
• The website owners decision in all matters is final.

Disclaimers

• Every effort has been made to ascertain the accuracy of the data. However, since some of the information was provided by others without documented sources, there is the possibility of errors. The website owners cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of any content or material found on The Website or linked to our site. Furthermore, you agree not to hold the The Website or it's owners, agents or data suppliers, responsible for any issues that may arise from the inaccuracy of the content on this site.
  
• This database contains information that has been proved as well as information that is speculative and in the process of being proved or disproved. Do not take everything you find here (or in any other online database) as absolute, complete or 100% accurate.
• If you do not agree with any of the aformentioned actual or impled Policies or Terms and Conditions, you must leave this site now. Click here to do that now.

... and finally

We hope that you enjoy your visit to our website and that you find it interesting and fulfilling. We are always pleased to hear from visitors, so please feel free to leave any comments in our Guestbook.

If you have any questions regarding our Privacy Policy or Terms of Use, please get in touch.

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