Legal

Privacy policy

You are trusting us with a file containing your family's names, dates, and sometimes things nobody outside the family knows. This page sets out exactly what we hold, for how long, and what we will never do with it, in plain English rather than the usual wall of clauses.

Who we are

Ancient Family Roots ("we", "us") is an independent support service for people using Family Tree Maker. The data controller is Ancient Family Roots, 36045 45th Avenue, St. Joseph, MN 56374, United States. You can reach us at info@ancientfamilyroots.com or through our contact page.

We are not affiliated with the publisher of Family Tree Maker or with Ancestry. We have no access to your accounts with them, and nothing in this policy gives us any.

What we collect

What we never collect

• No card details. Payments are handled by a payment provider; we never see or store your card number.
• No remote control of your computer. Sessions are screen-share only. We can see, but we cannot click or type.
• No access to your Ancestry or TreeVault account.
• No selling or sharing of your data. Not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not to anyone.

How screen-share sessions work

This is the part most privacy policies skip, and it's the part that should worry you most, so here it is in full.

• You start the session and you end it. Close the tab and it stops immediately. Nothing keeps running afterwards.
• You choose what to share. Share a single window rather than your whole screen if you'd prefer we never see the rest of your desktop.
• We can see, not control. We talk you through what to click; we don't take over.
• We will see parts of your family tree. That's unavoidable when diagnosing a tree problem. We treat what we see as confidential and don't record, screenshot or repeat it.
• Sessions are not recorded unless you ask for a recording, which some people do for training sessions. If one is made, it's yours, and we delete our copy after sending it.
• Blank the screen whenever you like. If a password prompt or something private appears, say so and we'll look away or you can stop sharing for a moment.

If you send us your tree file

For file repair work we usually need a copy. It contains real information about living people, so it's handled accordingly:

• We work on a copy. Your original is never modified.
• It is stored only as long as the work takes, then deleted within [X] days.
• It is never opened for any purpose other than the repair you asked for.
• It is never uploaded to Ancestry, shared with a third party, or used as an example.
• You can ask us to delete it at any point, and we'll confirm when it's done.

Cookies and analytics

This site sets no advertising cookies and carries no advertising. There is nothing to sell your attention to.

• Browser storage. Your light/dark theme and text-size choice are saved in your own browser. This never reaches our servers and isn't a tracking cookie.
• Analytics. We use Google Analytics, loaded through Google Tag Manager, to see which guides get read and which fail people. This is aggregate data: page views, rough location by country, device type, and how you arrived. It also records words typed into the site search when they return no result, so we can see what people look for and can't find, and write the guide that's missing. We don't try to identify individual visitors, and we don't upload anything you type into the enquiry form to it.
• Behaviour analytics. We use Microsoft Clarity, which records how visitors interact with these pages, including mouse movement, clicks and scrolling, and can replay a session as an anonymous, reconstructed view of the page. We use it to find guides where people get stuck, not to watch individuals. Clarity masks text input by default, so what you type into the enquiry form is not captured in a replay. If you would rather not be included, most browsers offer a Do Not Track setting, and blocking clarity.ms in a privacy extension stops it entirely without affecting anything else on this site.
• Live chat. The chat window on this site is provided by Tawk.to. If you open it, the conversation is stored on their servers so we can read and reply to it, and a cookie is set so the chat remembers you between pages. You can read the site without opening it, and nothing is recorded unless you do. Please don't type passwords or payment details into the chat. We will never ask for them there.
• Fonts. Typefaces load from a third-party font service, which means your browser makes a request to it and that provider may log the request.

Who else sees your data

Only the suppliers needed to run the service, and only what each one needs:

• Our web host serves the pages and keeps standard server logs. The enquiry form is processed on our own hosting rather than by a third-party form service, so what you write goes straight to us.
• Our email provider carries the replies.
• Our live chat provider (Tawk.to) stores chat conversations so we can read and answer them.
• Our analytics providers (Google, Microsoft) measure which pages get read and where people get stuck, as described above.
• Our screen-share provider connects the session.
• Our payment provider takes payment. They see the card details, we don't.

We do not sell your data, share it for advertising, or pass it to anyone else, except where the law genuinely requires it.

Your rights

Wherever you live, we'll honour these. Write to info@ancientfamilyroots.com and we'll respond within one month.

• Ask what we hold about you, and get a copy.
• Have it corrected if it's wrong.
• Have it deleted. Except records we're legally obliged to keep, such as invoices.
• Object to how we use it, or ask us to restrict it.
• Complain to a regulator if you think we've handled it badly.

If you're in the UK or EU, our lawful bases are contract (delivering the support you asked for), legitimate interests (replying to enquiries, keeping the site working), and legal obligation (keeping financial records). If you're in California, we do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined under the CCPA.

Security

• The site is served over HTTPS.
• Files you send are kept in access-controlled storage and deleted on the schedule above.
• We keep as little as possible — the simplest protection against a breach is not holding the data.
• No system is perfectly secure, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling something. If a breach ever affected your data, we'd tell you promptly and plainly.

Children

This service is for adults and we don't knowingly collect data from children under 13. Family trees routinely contain information about living children — we treat that as confidential like everything else, and we never use it for any purpose beyond the work you asked for.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. Material changes affecting how we handle your data will be flagged rather than slipped in quietly.

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