Privacy Policy

At wholivedthere.com, we recognise the importance of privacy to you and we are committed to protecting personal information and letting you know how we handle it.

Data Protection Act 1998 (United Kingdom)

Wholivedthere.com is registered under the Data Protection Act 1998 (United Kingdom). Registration number Z9875339.

The purpose of the website

This website collects data from its users, members and subscribers relating to properties they, their ancestors, their families, friends and neighbours, live in or have lived in. The purpose is to enable users around the world to create a complete picture of the movement of their ancestors over several centuries and to identify when properties were built, converted or demolished, or when streets were re-numbered, re-named or re-routed. The website is intended primarily to be of value to genealogists and family historians but it will undoubtedly appeal to other interest groups as well.

Information collection and use

1. Wholivedthere.com collects personal information when you register with the website. Such information includes your name, email address, birth date, sex, occupation, who you live with and where you live now and where you have lived in the past. When you register and sign in to our website you are not anonymous to us. When using the website, we process your personal information to the extent necessary to enable us to provide the service and to operate the website for the purpose for which it is reasonably intended.
2. You can mark certain personal information (for example your age, your current home address, your occupation) as “Private”. This information will be known to us but will not be displayed for others to see. However, subscribers to the website may seek your permission to access some of the details you have marked as private.
3. Although you can elect to keep your current home address private previous home addresses are displayed for the benefit of users in keeping with the purpose of the website.
4. The options to keep some details private are offered only for the entries of living people.
5. Information submitted about other living people (and the properties they live in or have lived in), that is freely available from an ethical source in the public domain, is accepted in good faith for the benefit of users and is not regarded as breaching a person’s privacy.
6. Information submitted about other living people (and the properties they live in or have lived in), that is not otherwise in the public domain, is accepted on the understanding that the submitter 1) has respected the privacy rights of the individual(s) concerned and 2) has considered carefully the options provided on the website to mark sensitive and personal information as private.
7. Wholivedthere.com does not accept responsibility for information submitted by users and relies on its members and subscribers to respect the rights of living people who may wish to protect their privacy.
8. We process data you have submitted relating to your and other people’s current and previous homes (excluding those details you have selected to keep private) for the benefit of other users of the website.
9. Wholivedthere.com automatically receives and records information on our server logs from your browser including your IP address, cookie information and the pages you visit on our site. We use this information for the following purposes: to customise the content of the website to meet your common website usage and interests; improve and optimise the service we provide; to contact you when necessary regarding your membership, and for administration and accounting purposes; to conduct research; and to provide anonymous reporting for internal and external contacts. Your personal information is also used to operate a member directory through which other members can contact you.
10. Nowhere on the website do we knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13. Anyone who seeks to register with us who is 13 – 17 is requested to have parental or guardian approval. However, the purpose and content of this website is not intended for, and does not require, an exclusively adult membership. Current addresses of anyone under the age of 18 are automatically hidden.

Where your personal registration information is held

All personal information is held by wholivedthere.com and stored on our secure database.

Disclosure of your personal information

1. We may share your personal information with our agents, representatives, contractors and service providers in order to operate the website and provide you with a service (including, for example, remote data backup of your personal information).
2. If you wish to make a payment, you will be automatically directed to our secure sever. Your payment details will be processed by our card-processing partner, Barclays Bank. We will not pass on any information to Barclays Bank other than that required to facilitate your transaction. All information supplied to Barclays Bank shall be governed by their data protection and privacy policy.
3. We may disclose to third parties certain “aggregate information” (information from which the user’s identity has been removed). This could, for example, be information relating to how you use the website. No “personally identifiable information” will be disclosed unless we are authorised by you or legally obligated to do so by a statutory authority with the appropriate jurisdiction.
4. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of any such linked site and hereby expressly disclaim all responsibility and liability that may arise therefrom.

No Spam policy

We operate under a strict “no spam” policy: we will never sell, rent or otherwise transfer your personal registration information to any third parties for marketing purposes.

Delete account / cease to be a user

You can delete your account with wholivedthere.com by contacting us via the contact us form supplied on the site. If you voluntarily delete your account when part of your subscription period is unexpired, no refund is due to you. Only your personal registration account details will be deleted (subject to a period when information is stored in our archives – see below). Information you have provided regarding your previous homes (not current home) and other persons’ homes will not be hidden or deleted as this information has been provided by you and received by us in good faith for the benefit and value of other members using the website. However, wholivedthere.com will consider sympathetically any specific request to remove certain information from the database if you believe, maybe with hindsight, that such information is inaccurate, misleading or particularly personal or sensitive and therefore should not be displayed to other users.

How long your personal information is held in archives

We will store your personal information for as long as you are a user. After you cease to be a member or subscriber, we will keep your personal registration information on our archive records for a period of five years. After that time, we will delete all of your personal registration information from our records, apart from any information — such as your billing information — that we are legally required to keep.

Accessing and updating your personal information

1. You are entitled to ask for a copy of any personal data that we hold about you.
2. You can update your personal information by logging in and editing the “My Account” section.

Website security

We do our utmost to ensure the security of our systems and protect your personal data. security procedures including the use of firewalls, backup measures, limiting access to data to relevant personnel only and password protecting all machinery holding personal data. Internet security, however, is a complex topic and no system can be said to be 100% secure. In the unlikely event of a security breach, we would endeavour to react as quickly as possible to remedy the problem but cannot assume responsibility for member details compromised.

Your responsibility

This website makes certain information you provide available to its users and that must be accepted as its reasonable purpose. Wholivedthere.com does not accept responsibility for information submitted by members or subscribers that breaches any privacy act. Members and subscribers must submit information that is honest and respectful of, and sensitive to, an individual’s privacy and that complies with the privacy laws of their own country.

Third party sites

This website may contain links to third party sites but we are not responsible for the privacy policies of these sites, or for the way in which information about their users is treated.

"Tell a friend"

We offer a “Tell a friend” service that enables you to tell a friend about our website. Your friends will never receive unsolicited emails from us and, once the initial “Tell a friend” email is sent, they will never hear from us again unless they choose to become members themselves.

Changes in our privacy policy

Please ensure that you review this privacy policy regularly for updates. Each time that you use the website, or provide us with information, by doing so you are accepting the practices described in this privacy policy at that time.

Further questions

Should you have any further questions or concerns about the contents of this privacy policy, how we use your personal information or your dealings with this website, please contact us at: info@wholivedthere.co.uk

Effective date: 1st May 2007