Privacy Policy

Updated as of December, 2009

Digital Estate Corporation, operator of this Website, recognizes the confidentiality of information that may be disclosed by Members or other users in registering or making purchases from our Website and we are firmly committed to protecting your privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for this Website. To understand how we treat the information you give us as you use this Website you should read this policy. The date of the latest update was shown above, you will not receive any other notice of changes to this statement. For definition of terms, please see Terms of Use page.

Personal Information Gathered

• Consent . Unless permitted by law, no personal information is collected, without first obtaining your consent to the collection, use and dissemination of that information. However, we may seek consent to use and disclose personal information after it has been collected in those cases where we wish to use the information for a new or different purpose where you have not already consented to such a use of your personal information. By providing personal information on this website, you agree that we may collect, use and disclose your personal information in accordance with this Policy. In addition, where appropriate, specific authorizations or consents may be obtained from time to time. In most cases, and subject to legal and contractual restrictions, you are free to refuse or withdraw your consent at any time, upon reasonable advance notice. In certain circumstances, products or services can only be offered or provided if you provide personal information Consequently, if you choose not to provide us with any required personal information, we may not be able to offer or provide the products or services requested.
• Account User Information . When you sign up for membership on our Website we will ask for your name, e-mail address, and other limited personal information. Most of this information may be entered at your discretion. We may ask for similar information at other times, such as when you enter sweepstakes or other promotions sponsored by us and/or our many partners.
• Payment Information . To facilitate payment and fulfillment for membership, we will request personal credit card or debit card information. In order to take advantage of other value-added family services that may be offered in the future, Users may be required to supply financial information.
• Usage Information . We may record information about your usage, such as when you use your account, the groups, and favorites you subscribe to, the contacts you communicate with, and the frequency and size of data transfers. If you are logged in, we may associate that information with your account.
• IP Addresses and Cookies . We do use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, and to administer our Website. Your IP address is also used to gather broad demographic information such as geographic distribution of our members. Cookies are tiny files placed onto the hard drive of your computer when you register at our Website that enable our server to recognize or "remember" who you are each time you return. We may make limited use of cookies to deliver content specific to your interests. For instance they may be used to retain your personal preferences, hold session information for a "shopping basket," or save your password so it doesn’t have to be re-entered each time you login. Also, we may use third-party advertising companies to serve advertisements on our behalf. These companies may employ cookies and action tags (also known as single pixel gifs or web beacons) to measure advertising effectiveness.
• Content Uploaded to Site . You can choose to share further information about yourself, your activity on our site, your background and interests with other members. The amount and type of the profile information you share in this way is entirely your choice. Any personal information, photos or video content that you voluntarily disclose online (on blogs, discussion boards, in messages and chat areas, within your profile pages, etc.) becomes publicly available to other Members and can be collected and used by other Members.
• Family and Friends Information . Where you choose to invite other family members to view and edit your Family tree, Family circle, Friends Network or profile manager we will ask you for the family or friend member's e-mail address. You must first make certain that you have obtained the consent of the family member to the passing of their details by you to us. We will only use this information for the purpose of contacting the relatives with their access details and will not use the information for marketing purposes. In addition you should also make sure that information or material you wish to place on the site about your living relatives is only posted with their prior knowledge and consent.

Use of Personal Information

• Account Support . The personal information you submit to us through the Website, we use your personal information to operate, maintain, and provide to you the general and personalized features and functionality of the Website, and to process any flagging activity or correspondence you send to us.
• Other Members . Your account name maybe displayed to other Members. When you upload content including videos, pictures, documents or typed text or when you send messages through the Website, other Members can contact you through messages and comments. It is your choice whether to display this information to nonmembers, certain Members or all Members of the Website. Any content that you submit to the Websites as shared with other Members may be redistributed through the internet and other media channels by other Members, and may be viewed by the general public.
• Administrative . We do not use your email address or other personally identifiable information to send commercial or marketing messages without your consent or except as part of a specific program or feature for which you will have the ability to opt-in or opt-out. We may, however, use your email address without further consent for non-marketing or administrative purposes such as notifying you of major Website changes or for customer service purposes.
• Improve Website Design . We use both your personally identifiable information and certain non-personally-identifiable information (such as anonymous user usage data, cookies, IP addresses, browser type, clickstream data, etc.) to improve the quality and design of the Website and to create new features, promotions, functionality, and services by storing, tracking, analyzing, and processing user preferences and trends, as well as user activity and communications.
• Direct Mailing . We will send electronic mail to you for the purpose of informing you of changes or additions to, or of, any of our related products and services. If you do not want to receive such mailings, you may opt out at any time by using the unsubscribe link listed in the e-mail or by making appropriate selections in the MyAccount tab on the Website.
• Your Convenience . We use cookies, clear gifs, and log file information to: (a) store information so that you will not have to re-enter it during your visit or the next time you visit the Website; (b) provide custom, personalized content and information; (c) monitor the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns; (d) monitor aggregate metrics such as total number of visitors, pages viewed, etc.; and (e) track your entries, submissions, and status in promotions, sweepstakes and contests.

Disclose of Personal Information to Third Parties

• Third-Party Advertisers . We allow other companies, called third-party ad servers or ad networks, to serve advertisements within the Website. These third-party advertisement servers or advertisement networks use technology to send, directly to your browser, the advertisements and links that appear on the Website. They automatically receive your IP address when this happens. They may also use other technologies (such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons) to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and to personalize the advertising content you see. We will not disclose any of your personal information to advertisers, except with your knowledge and consent, or as described in this policy or as may be required by law, or to protect our rights or property. In distributing advertiser or sponsor messages, the advertiser never has access to individual account information. We do not sell, rent or otherwise distribute the personal information you provide us to these advertisers. Advertisers simply provide an insertion order for the advertising message and we then display the ad to appropriate users based on the criteria specified in the order.
• Service Providers . We may disclose your personal information to individuals or organizations who are our service providers. Where we disclose personal information to organizations that perform services on our behalf, we will require those service providers to use such information solely for the purposes of providing services to you or us and to have appropriate safeguards for the protection of that personal information.
• Corporate Restructuring . As our business continues to grow, we might buy or sell subsidiaries or business units. In these transactions, customer information is often one of the transferred assets, remaining subject to promises made in existing privacy statements. Also, in the event that we, or substantially all of our assets are acquired, customer information will as a matter of course remain one of the transferred assets.
• Statistical Purpose . We reserve the right to disclose aggregated user statistics, such as "55% of our Users are female" or "47% of our Users have attended college" in order to describe our services to prospective partners, advertisers, and other third parties.
• Other Websites . If you exit our Website to visit the site of any third party advertiser or sponsor, you may be asked for your credit card or other personal information in order to purchase or use products and services offered. These companies have their own privacy and data collection practices. We have no responsibility or liability for these independent policies. You should therefore review their privacy policies carefully if you have concerns about how your information may be used.
• Other Circumstances . Limited personal information may be disclosed are specifically described when the data is collected, such as in the User Agreement, or in the rules of sweepstakes or other promotions. So, in all cases you control what, if any, information you disclose.

Protection of Personal Information

• We endeavor to maintain appropriate physical, procedural and technical security with respect to our offices and information storage facilities, so as to prevent any loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, or modification of personal information. This also applies to our disposal or destruction of personal information.
• The principal place in which we hold personal information is in the city of Dallas, Texas, USA, and nearby municipalities where off-site hosting or storage facilities may be located.
• Other than restricting third party access mentioned above, we further protects personal information by restricting access to it to those of our personnel who have a need to know that information in order that we may provide our products or services.

Contacting the Website

If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, access to your personal information or your dealings with this Website, you can contact: