Privacy Policy and Terms of Use

Index

Privacy Policy

• Names and Relationships

• Photographs

• Personal Data Suppression

• Personal Data Access

• Personal Data Security

Terms of Use

• Restrictions

• Disclaimers

Privacy Policy

The primary objective in genealogy is to identify all ancestors and descendants in a particular family tree and to collect personal data on them.  As a minimum, this data includes the individual's name and the date/location of birth, marriage, and death. In order to support research by other genealogists, this data is often published on internet genealogy websites.

As a genealogist, therefore, I may have collected much personal information on you and your family from a variety of sources. The privacy of this information is important to me and I assure you there is a privacy policy in place for the Simmons Genealogy website.

Most of us would prefer not to have to worry about our personal data but, in this day and age, we must use caution to prevent misuse of the information. Identity theft and credit fraud are the worst problems. There is concern that information distributed to distant relatives or put on a genealogy websites makes it easier for unscrupulous individuals to commit invasions of privacy or other frauds. However, the personal information that the identity thieves and credit fraud perpetrators want are full names, social security numbers, dates and places of birth, current occupation/employment data, and bank/credit card account numbers.  It is my understand that one or two facts alone (e.g., your name and/or your mother’s maiden name) are not enough information to cause damage.

Names and Relationships

Many genealogy programs can suppress the names of living individuals and substitute “living" or “still living". I designed this website so it does suppress the names of living individuals. If you are aware that someone is living and their name is shown here, please let me know, so I can remedy the situation.

Note: Only family member who have a login (with permissions that I control) and login to the site will be able to view living individual information but only for their branch of the family.
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Photographs

Photographs of living individuals are considered personal data and are normally suppressed. However, if the individual so chooses, a photograph can be tagged as “always visible.” Before any photograph can be included in this website, permission is obtained from the owner of a photograph.  Permission is also obtained from living individuals in a photograph if,

·                               they are identified in the caption/description or

·                               they can be identified through deductive reasoning using names/relationships found elsewhere.

All photographs have a “Owner/Source” entry to indicate that the photo is being displayed with permission.

If anyone finds a photograph that could be in violation of this policy, please contact the website owner and the situation will be corrected.

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Personal Data Suppression

To insure the privacy of living individuals, our internet genealogy website always suppress the personal data of living individuals from viewing by the general public. Personal data includes, but is not limited to, birth/marriage dates/locations, photographs, notes, and biographies.

Note: If a relative does not want their personal data to reside in a website server database in spite of password protection, that individual and linked descendants can not be accommodated by the security program. They are reluctantly excluded from the website.
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Personal Data Access

Personal data access is restricted to family members who must login to access the normally suppressed personal data of living individuals. The access will be restricted to their own family branch. You must first read the Simmons Genealogy Privacy Policy, agree with the Simmons Genealogy Terms of Use, and register for a user account. When registering for your user account, you must indicate how you are related to our family. If you are not related, you will not be granted access.

With registration, you will be granted access only to your unique family branch within our database. If you add new records, please notify me so I can update my personal computer database which is used to populate the website. Failure to notify me may result in your data not being preserved across a database refresh. Your access will be restricted to:

• You (the registered user) and your spouse (but not your spouse's family).

• Your descendants and their spouses.

• Your parents and grandparents.

• Your uncles/aunts and their spouses.

• Your 1st cousins and their spouses (but not their children).

• Your siblings and their spouses.

• Your nephews/nieces and their spouses (but not their children).

Note: To see the personal data of a spouse's family branch, married users will have to log in with their spouse's user name and password. If any family branch individual does not want their suppressed personal data accessed, the security design allows a "lock” to be put on their data. This does, however, preclude registration of that individual.  If you consider using your spouse's user ID a security violation, please request a second login account that will be restricted to your spouse's family.

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Personal Data Security

Original data given to me in trust (personal information, e-mail/street addresses, phone numbers, etc.) is not provided to others unless your approval is first obtained. You should be aware, however, that most of this information is public domain and may be readily available to others using internet search engines (e.g., Yahoo People Search, Google.com, Birthday.com) from other sources.

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Terms of Use

This site is owned and operated by Wayne Simmons. The term "you" will refer to any person viewing the website content using the URL "simmonsgenealogy.com".

The Simmons Genealogy website contains copyrighted material and other proprietary information including, but not limited to, text, photos, and graphics. The entire contents (except for US Census images) of this site, including the title logo, are being copyrighted as a collective work under the United States copyright laws and all rights are reserved.

All of the pages located within the domain http://www.simmonsgenealogy.com/, are accessible to the public for free without charges or fees of any kind, with the exception of access to data on living persons which is allowed only to family members.

The information on this site is intended to be freely used by researchers for personal, non-commercial use that is not meant to generate income or money.

For those who wish to use this information for personal, noncommercial purposes, I ask only that you give credit by citing the page url address (http://...) that contains the information you are using, and/or the name and address of the main page of the website, for example:

·                               "The Simmons Family Genealogy," http://www.simmonsgenealogy.com/

Note: It is expressly forbidden for anyone to charge for access to these pages, or to provide the information contained on them to anyone for any kind of fee or charge, or to use them in a commercial manner.

If you have been charged a fee to access these pages, or know of a site that is doing so, or that is reproducing information from this site for a fee, please contact me using the link at the bottom of the page.

Thanks.

(for more information on internet genealogy sites that scam people by charging them to access free sites, go to this page at the Rootsweb: International Black Sheep Society Of Genealogists' Genealogy Hall of Shame).

The domain "simmonsgenealogy.com" is owned by me, Wayne Simmons

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Restrictions

By using this site, you agree to the following terms of use and any changes thereto:

• The Simmons Genealogy website is for the personal use of the family members listed herein. Use by others is limited to the purpose of genealogical research. The content of this site can not be used for any sort of unsolicited mail or commercial purposes.

• Family members must not share their user name and password with anyone except their current spouse and minor children. They also agree not to share personal data of family members accessible through use of that password without the express permission of the individuals concerned.

• Individual images may be copied by family members for their personal use. General distribution, including use on other websites, is prohibited by copyright law unless permission is obtained from the owner of the photo, living individuals in the photo (if identifiable), and the site owner.

• Biographies and documents may be copied by family members for their personal use. General distribution (including use on other websites) is prohibited by copyright law unless permission is obtained from the site owner.

• In the event of permitted copying or distribution of copyrighted material, no changes in, or deletion of, author attribution or copyright notice shall be made. You acknowledge that you do not acquire any ownership rights by downloading copyrighted material.

• You agree to give appropriate credit for any material from this website that you use in a written document, genealogical database, or website of your own. You agree to include a link to our site on any genealogical web page of yours that makes use of the content on this site.

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Disclaimer:

• Every effort has been made to ascertain the accuracy of the data. However, since some of the information was provided by others without documented sources, there is the possibility of errors. The "SimmonsGenealogy.com" cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of any content or material found on our site or linked to our site. Furthermore, you agree not to hold the "SimmonsGenealogy.com" responsible for any issues that may arise from the inaccuracy of the content on this site.

• This database contains information that has been proved as well as information that is speculative and in the process of being proved or disproved. Do not take everything you find here (or in any other online database) as gospel truth.

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