Privacy Policy

1. 1 Required Member Registration and Subscription Information

We collect personal information provided to us when a person  applies to become a member of the Charles Burns Family Association. All personal information provided to us must be true, complete, and accurate, and each member must notify us of any changes to such personal information. To maintain site security, facilitate electronic communications among our distributed membership, manage memberships, and develop resources of most value, each person applying for membership must  provide: 

• name
• phone number
• email address
• mailing address
• username
• password
• choice of membership plan
• time zone

1.2. Member Contributions

After a member registers, we publish additional information the member voluntarily contributes, such as:

• years of genealogical research experience
• how Charles Burns Family Association may of most help to the member
• family group information, such as names and birth, date, and marriage dates; events and event locations; religious affiliations, occupations; genders, and relationships 
• family history
• articles about research discoveries findings or methods
• sources, citations and other documentation
• photographs and other images

1.3 Site Administration and Member Management Data

Site administration, subscription, and member data collected and stored internally includes but is not limited to: 

• user and member details
• membership subscription status
• order history
• cookies and similar technology that functionally improves and secures our website 
• website visitor data, such as device used, browser, IP
• address, pages visited
• anonymous email delivery and opening statistics

2. 1 May Be Viewed by the Public

We publish a list of surnames found in our unified tree of descendants of Charles Burns, born about 1720 and died about 1789 in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This information is useful to people who are deciding whether to become a member. The public will not have permission to view details about the individuals with a given surname.

We may from time to time publish blog articles that may be viewed by the public.

2. 2 May Be Viewed Only by A Member

Payment details (other than credit card or bank transfer information) for subscriptions or items sold via the Charles Burns Family Association.

2. 3 May Be Viewed by Other Members and Managers

A member may choose to make their member profile, which contains personally identifiable information, viewable by other active members.

A member creates user-generated content by participating in online discussions or contacting us to provide feedback, make a suggestions, or report an issue. User-generated content is recorded and may be viewed by other members and managers and system administrators. If a discussion between a member and a moderator or a suggestion is marked as private, only the member, moderators/managers, and system administrators will be able to view the content. User-generated content is archived.

All information and files contributed by a member related to family history may be published and viewed by other members, even if the contributor is no longer an active member. However, if there is a privacy concern, requests for redactions will be considered.

Articles and data uploaded and shared for collaboration may be viewed by editors, publishers, and process managers.

2. 4 May Be Viewed by Site Administrators and Managers

Site administrators and process and project managers and  may view and manage:

• site administration data, such as your IP address and the browser that you use
• subscription data, such as your subscription status, your plan, renewal date, and payment choice
• anonymous email receipt and opening statistics
• member profile data, which includes personally identifiable information
• content uploaded or created by a member (to help them manage their content)
• data being fact-checked, edits, reformatted, and published for sharing with members

In particular, data will be reviewed during the editing process to delete content that identifies:

• a person who has not been deceased for at least 30 years (even if data is is available in public sources such as obituaries or death notices)
• a person who does not have documented death date and is less than 120 years of age
• a living or deceased person and associated DNA test results without explicit permission
• a living person who does not want any information about them listed, (even if the information is available through public sources, such as census records and directories.

2. 5 May Not Be Viewed by Anyone

All electronic payment data (e. g., credit cards or bank transfers) are collected and stored by PayPal. You may find their privacy notice here: https://www.paypal.com/legalhub/privacy-full

People who take DNA tests may choose to participate in DNA projects administered by the Charles Burns Family Association. However, project DNA results will be stored and published by Family Tree DNA using their business rules and technology. You may find their privacy policy here: https://www.familytreedna.com/legal/privacy-statement

3.1 Why Do We Process Your Information?

We process your personal information for a variety of reasons, depending on  how your interact with the our Service, to:

Create and Manage Accounts, Authenticate Users

We may process your information so you can create and log in to your account, as well as keep your account in working order.

Deliver Services or Documents

We may process your information to provide you with a requested Service.

Respond to User Inquiries and Requests for Support

We may process your information to respond to your inquiries and solve any potential issues you might have with the requested Service.

Deliver Administrative Information

We may process your information to send you details about our products and Service, changes to our terms and policies, and other similar information.

Fulfill Orders

We may process your information to fulfill and manage your order, payment, returns, and exchanges made through our Service.

Enable User-to-User Communication

We may process your information if you choose to use any of our offerings that allow for communication with another user.

Request Feedback

We may process your information when necessary to request feedback and to contact you about your use of our Service.

Protect Our Service

We may process your information as part of our efforts to keep our Service safe and secure, including fraud monitoring and prevention.

Identify Usage Trends

We may process information about how you use our Service to better understand  how they are being used so we can improve them.

Save or Protect An Individual’s Vital Interest

We may process your information when necessary to save or protect an individual’s vital interest, such as to prevent harm.

3.2 Third-Party Sites and Services

We use ScalaHosting, a website hosting service, to store our content and publish it on the World Wide Web. You may find their privacy policy here: https://www.scalahosting.com/privacy-policy.html.

We use Amazon Web Service (AWS) to store online backups of our website. You may view their privacy policy here: https://aws.amazon.com/privacy/?nc1=f_pr

Newsletters and emails are sent via AcyMailing, a commercial newsletter and email management provider. AcyMailing stores your name, user name, and email address in mailing lists managed by the Charles Burns Family Association for the sole purpose of managing newsletter subscriptions and delivering email. You may view their privacy policy here: https://www.acymailing.com/privacy-policy/

We may need to share your personal information in the following situations:

4. 1 Interacting with Other Members

When you share personal information (for example, by posting comments, contributions, or other content to the Service) or otherwise interact within the Community and Member areas of the Service, such personal information may be viewed by all Members.

Similarly, other Members may view descriptions of your activity and communicate with you within our Service if you permit them to  view your profile.

4.2 In the Case of Dissolution

Per our bylaws and per Internal Revenue Service compliance, should we dissolve our nonprofit organization, any assets and internal documents (including personal information) will be transferred to a nonprofit organization which is also a genealogical society/social club.

We will only keep your personal information for as long as it is necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy notice, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law (such as tax, account, or other legal requirements). No purpose in this notice will require us to keep your personal information for longer than twenty-four (24) months past the termination of the user’s account.

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete and anonymize such information, or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives) then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

You may ask to have the information on your account deleted or removed; however, because we keep track of past transactions, you cannot delete information associated with past transactions on this site.

We have implemented appropriate and reasonable technical and organization security measures designed to protect the security of any personal information we process. This includes using security software tools to identify malware and to prevent hacking. We also periodically review and implement login safeguard procedures. 

Processing user contributions may require editors to download submitted files using a secure file transfer protocol and edit them with a desktop word processor or genealogy application. Editors are required to delete downloaded files from their desktop after the content has been edited, standardized, re-uploaded using a secure file transfer protocol, and published in the repository.

However, despite our safeguards and efforts to secure your information, no electronic transmission over the internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so we cannot promise or guarantee that hackers, cybercriminals, or other unauthorized third parties will not be able to defeat our security and improperly collect, access, steal, or modify your information. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, transmission of personal information to and from our Service is at your own risk. You should only access the Service within a secure environment.

Children 13 and older may use the site under the supervision of a parent or guardian who is a member. 

We do not knowingly solicit data from or market to children under 18 years of age. If we learn that personal information from users less than 18 years of age has been collected, we will deactivate the account and take reasonable measures to promptly delete such data from our records. If you become aware of any data we may have collected from children under age 18, please contact us.

We currently use cookies and may use different, but similar, tracking technologies in the future.

8.1 What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files which are transferred to your computer or mobile when you visit a website or app.

8.2 Why do we use cookies and other tracking?

To do a few different things, such as to:

• Help us understand how people are using our Service.
• Improve the user’s experience while visiting our website.

8.3 What are the types of cookies?

Some cookies are always on when you visit us, and you can’t turn them off unless you change your browser settings to “Do Not Track.”. We call these “necessary cookies.”  Examples would be recording if you are logged in or logged out and which pages you visit the most.

We do not use advertising cookies that collect information on your interests and purchases.

8.4 How long do cookies last?

Some are erased when you close the browser on your website or app. These are “session cookies.” Others are saved onto your device so that they’re there when you come back. These are called “persistent cookies.” They may remain on your device indefintely unless you proactively remove them.

8.5 How do I control my cookies and tracking?

Necessary cookies are always on when you visit us. Stopping all cookies might mean you can’t access some of our Services, or that some of them might not work properly for you. However modern web browsers and some mobile operating systems and mobile applications include a Do-No-Track (“DNT”) feature or setting you can activate to signal your preference not to have data about your online browsing activities monitored and collected. 

9.1 External Websites

Our website may provide links to external websites solely the user's convenience and education. When you follow a link to an external website, you're leaving charlesburnsfamily.org and the external site's terms and policies apply. We are not responsible for the contents of external web pages and a link to a page doesn't constitute an enforsement.

9.2 Social Media and Other Sites That Require Registration

We use the social media website Facebook™ to:

• Improve information sharing
• Promote participation
• Encourage membership

We do not own, manage, or control social media websites. In addition, we don't collect, maintain, or disseminate information posted by visitors to social media websites. If you choose to provide information to a social media website through registration or other interaction with the website, the use of any information you provide is controlled by your relationship with the social media website. For example, any information you provide to register on Facebook is voluntarily contributed and isn't maintained by us. This information may be available to our social media managers and administrators in whole or in part, based on a user's privacy settings on the social media website. However, we won't use personally identifiable information provided by you to a social media website, or other website that requires registration, for targeted advertising.

Although you may voluntarily contribute to a social medai website with the intent to share the information with others on Charles Burns Family Association pages on social media websites, to protect your privacy, don't disclose personally identifiable information about yourself or others.

We don't keep separate records or accounting of any social media website users or their interactions with the Charles Burns Family Association pages on social media websties. We don't store or use this information. User information is retained by social media websites in accordance with the website's policies.View a social media website's privacy policy to see how long user information is retained after an account has been deleted.

To learn more about how Facebook™ uses and maintains information, visit their their privacy policy.

We may update this privacy notice from time to time. The updated version will be indicated by an updated “Revised” date and the updated version will be effective as soon as it is accessible. If we make material changes to this privacy notice, we may notify you either by prominently posting a notice of such changes or by directly sending you a notification. We encourage you to review this privacy notice frequently to be informed of how we are protecting your information.

You may withdraw your consent by contacting us online (if a member and authenticated and logged in) or in writing.

• By using this site and registering as a member, you are giving consent for the aforementioned information to be collected and processed as described. 
• You may request an export of the personal data that we collect about you. If you are authenticated and logged in, you may make this request online (if a member who is authenticated and logged in). We will then ask you to confirm your request electronically. Once we receive electronic confirmation or written request, we will send you an export of the personal data we have collected about you.
• Should you wish to withdraw your consent, you have this right. If you request to delete your personal information, we will also cancel your membership account. You may request that we delete your personal information online (if a member who is authenticated and logged in) or in writing. If you make an online request to delete your information, we will ask you to electronically confirm your request. When confirmed we will delete your personal information and account.
• Upon cancellation and deletion of your account, we may retain some information in our files to prevent fraud, troubleshoot problems, assist with any investigations, enforce our legal terms and/or comply with applicable legal requirements. While canceling or deleting your account will be a deletion of your personal information, any documents you provided during your membership that have become part of a database shall remain with the company. Specifics on documents collected can be found above in the “What Information to We Collect” section. 

If you have questions or comments about your privacy rights or wish to withdraw your consent/cancel your membership, you may contact us online or write to us at:

Charles Burns Family Association
PO Box 231
Burns, OR  97720
USA