Our Privacy Policy and Cookies

Devon Family History Research is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office. We are committed to protecting the personal information you share with us.

 

The General Data Protection Regulation 2018 (GDPR), ensures that you will have more control over how your personal data is used, and how you're contacted by us.

 

This page explains how Devon Family History Research processes your personal data, how long we keep it for, and some of your rights.

 

What is personal data?

 

Personal data is any information that relates to an identified or an identifiable living individual. Different pieces of information, which collected together can lead to the identification of a particular person, also constitute personal data.

 

The personal data we collect from you

 

We collect the contact details you provide, such as your email address, your phone number and your address.

 

We may also collect personal data that you supply about a living individual, if it is required for carrying out some genealogical research work e.g. tracing the ancestors of a living person - when we would need their name, the date and place of birth, the date and place of marriage etc.

 

Why we collect personal data

 

We collect personal data in order to communicate with you, to form a contract with you and to carry out our work for you as genealogists. This includes the need for us to keep business records and file accounts.

 

When you contact us or commission us to carry out work

 

All enquiries are handled in the strictest confidence. When you contact us for further information or commission us to carry out a project, we will ask you to provide us with personal information such as your name, your address, your email address, and contact phone numbers.  We may also require additional personal and family information in order to carry out work for you.  The personal data you provide will be used to communicate with you, to form a contract with you and to enable the commissioned work to be undertaken. It would also be used for accounting and record keeping purposes.

 

Living people in written reports and charts etc

 

We will exclude any data relating to living people such as names, birth and marriage dates, place of residence etc) from written reports and family tree charts unless you expressly ask us to include it.  Any special requests must be made in writing, either by email or by post.

 

Third parties

 

We will only disclose your personal data to third parties as is necessary to comply with any legal obligation, to enforce or to apply our terms and conditions, or with your express permission in writing (either by email or by post).

 

We do not sell any personal data to third parties.

 

Retention of personal data and deletion

 

Personal data will be retained by us for no longer than necessary, and it will only be used for the purposes for which it was collected.

 

We will ensure that the personal data we hold is accurate and kept up-to-date.

 

We will keep personal data for a maximum period of six years, when we will delete it. We will only retain personal data longer than six years if you expressly ask us to do so and we agree. Any requests must be made in writing, either by email or by post.

 

Storage of personal data

 

The personal data which we hold will be held securely in accordance with legal requirements.

 

All information is securely held, and any data held on computer is password protected and encrypted where possible.  To protect data further, we also keep back-up copies which are securely held.

 

Please note that we cannot guarantee the security of your data during transmission or delivery to us.