Privacy Policy

Of course the Family Then and Now website is for the specific purpose of providing our visitors with personal information about our ancestral family lines. However, we restrict those whom we particularly identify and provide information about on a webpage devoted to them individually to (1) those individuals who have already died, (2) those living individuals who have granted us their permission to publicly post their (possibly limited) information, and (3) those living individuals who are about 60 years of age or older. Other individuals may be incidentally mentioned as a part of that presentation. Additionally, controlled access is allowed to certain editors and other site visitors who have reqested and been granted specific permission to view the otherwise hidden data known about other living individuals or family lines.

If anyone desires to have coverage or mention of themselves on the Family Then and Now removed or masked from public view, please contact the editor. Likewise, if responsible individuals would like to provide new, corrected, or additional family tree information, stories, or photographs, which involves or links to existing individuals included on this website, please contact the editor.

The Family Then and Now website strives both to provide informative content and to help our visitors as well as family members to reasonably protect their privacy. Our policy is to respect and protect the privacy of our users and family members. There are cases where we may ask you for personal information such as your name, e-mail address, or comments, etc. Even so, we will not rent, sell, or exchange any such information with a third party for any purpose. In most cases this information is immediately used to send the requested communications and is then deleted from our server.

The Family Then and Now website encourages parents and guardians to spend time online with their children, especially in learning about our shared family heritage. No information should be submitted to or posted on our webpages by visitors under 13 years of age without the consent of their parent or guardian.

When you view the Family Then and Now SlideShow we make use of "cookies" for the purpose of enabling you to return and continue viewing our SlideShow from the point where you last left off thereby avoiding re-viewing those slides you previously viewed. A cookie is a small amount of data that our website sends to your browser, which may then store it on your system. You can configure your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie thus giving you the chance to decide whether to accept it, or even to reject all cookies, but without this cookie our SlideShow continuation function will not work. We make no other use of this data.

To prevent unauthorized changes to the Family Then and Now content and/or hijacking of our system all the data entered into our system by visitors who attempt to gain access into our site administrative functions, or who utilize our site recommendation service, is logged and reviewed for potential abuse of those systems. Additionally their network location and IP address (including country, city, state, region, or any other geographic data), host name, and time of visit are recorded. And when necessary potential abusers are blocked from further access to our website(s).

Other non-personally identifiable data is routinely collected from all visitors to Family Then and Now to help us improve the experience of users of our website. To that end our web server logs collect data only in the aggregate such as:

• Type of Web browser used, software manufacturer, and version number;
• Type of operating system;
• Screen colors (color processing ability of the user's screen);
• Screen resolution;
• Network location and IP address (including country, city, state, region, or any other geographic data);
• Host name;
• Time of visit;
• Pages visited;
• Time spent on each page of the website;
• Referring site statistics;
• Any search engine query used (e.g., typing a phrase into a search engine such as Google and then clicking on a link to Family Then and Now from that search engine).

All of this aggregate data used to optimize our website for our visitors does not include, nor is it in any way linked to, any personally identifiable information that visitors provide to us through any other process.

However, in the cases of visitors who appearantly attempt to use this site to send spam messages or otherwise misuse the functionality of this site, we collect as much identifiable information about them as possible, keep logs of their attempts, warn them, and, if they persist in further attempts, we block their access to the site.

The Family Then and Now website does not provide any personally identifying information, regardless of its source, to any third party for any purpose whatsoever, other than the family ancestral information displayed on these pages, from any of our visitors including those under 13 years of age. No information collected from our visitors is ever used for any marketing purposes whatsoever.

While most links on our pages only go to other pages on this website, visitors should be aware that when they click on links to other websites from Family Then and Now website pages, they could be directed to other sites that are beyond our control. Although we have attempted to only link to other reputable websites, they may have links to other websites and we cannot be responsible for actions taken by, nor for information displayed by, those websites. Beyond what is on the Family Then and Now webpages, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you disclose online and you do so at your own risk.

The importance of security for all personally identifiable information associated with our visitors is of great concern to us. We exercise care in providing secure transmission of sensitive information from your personal computer to our servers by means of HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) encryption to secure communications on the web by encrypting data in transit between your web browser and our server - as indicated by the LOCK icon in your browser address line. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, the Family Then and Now website cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems and keep it for only as long as necessary to perform the requested task before being deleted.

By using the Family Then and Now website, you signify your assent to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to this policy, please do not use our sites. Your continued use of the Family Then and Now website following the posting of changes to these terms will mean you accept those changes.