Genealogy, Personal Data, and GDPR

Geneafinder is committed to protecting your personal data.

If you didn’t know already, Geneafinder is a free and private online site for genealogists. We have two goals: to save you time and to offer simpler tools! But above all, Geneafinder is committed to protecting your personal data. 

During the AZ Challenge 2018, we linked genealogy, personal data, and GDPR in our article Who Knows What About Us?. Quick reminder: according to the government, "every organization (administration, company, association, etc.) holds and processes personal data." Personal data is any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person, directly or indirectly, by reference to identifiers specific to that person.

Geneafinder collects personal data

Like any other genealogy site or software, Geneafinder collects some of your personal data, but which ones? 

Well, it’s quite simple. We collect your IP address, your email address, your messages, your tree ID, the surnames of your ancestors, and the location of your more or less close ancestors. 

This personal data is processed, but how? 

Your IP address is used to help us resolve technical issues you may encounter and to generate anonymous statistics about the overall status of the tool (lifetime of 13 months).  

Your email address is useful for registering and unregistering, for receiving help and important emails. 

Your tree ID is used to isolate your workspace. 

And all the information about your ancestors is processed only in the services we offer (tree visualization, missing date estimator, direct links to archives…). 

Geneafinder is committed to protecting your personal data 

Your personal data will never be used to wish you a happy birthday or remind you of your age. We know that many site partners where you have already identified yourself do this already. It will not be used to find your famous cousins or those you don’t want in your genealogy. Finally, your data will not be used or shared for other services than the ones we offer today. 

Moreover, geneafinder.com is a private genealogy site. No other user than you has access to your tree information, and this information is not indexed on search engines nor shared with partners. 

With Geneafinder, you have all the rights 

Law No. 2028-493 of June 20, 2018 regarding the protection of personal data and the CNIL, which protects and controls the use of your personal data, gives you rights: 

• to be informed about the use of your personal data
• to refuse the use of your personal data
• to access and understand the information about you held by the organization in question
• to correct your personal data
• to delete or permanently remove your personal data
• to data portability, i.e., to retrieve your personal data
• to human intervention in cases of profiling or automated decision-making

With Geneafinder, you keep control over your personal data and you alone decide when to share it.

It’s your tool! 

🙋‍♂️ Start or import your genealogical tree now and discover your family story

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Also read: 

How to create your genealogy tree online? 

Genealogy: your free genealogical tree on Geneafinder

Researching public archives for your genealogy

Genealogy: How to find missing dates? 

How to find your ancestors? Our genealogy search engine