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 Mitchell Family Online website with which you will be satisfied.

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. 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 members who have a login and are logged in to the site will be able to view living individual information. This will sometimes be restricted to only their branch of their family.

  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. Where, for any reason, all reasonable steps have been exhausted and the original owner cannot be found or contacted, any legitimate objection to the display of the photograph will result in immediate removal from the site until such objection can be addressed. 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.

The statements, "Photo Courtesy of.." and/or "Used with Permission" (or similar), combined with the owner's name identifies compliance with these requirements.

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  Personal Data Suppression

To insure the privacy of living individuals, our internet genealogy website always suppresses 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 will reluctantly have to be completely excluded from the website.

  Personal Data Access

Personal data access is restricted to family members who must login to access the normally suppressed personal data of living individuals. At the discretion of the site owner, access may be restricted to their own family branch only. You must first read the Mitchell Family Online Privacy Policy, agree with the Mitchell Family Online 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 normally be granted a user account unless a very special reason is identified. In this case, a temporary or time-limited account can be made available. With registration, you may only be granted access to your unique family branch within our database. If your access account provides the facility to add or modify records, you must please notify me, so that I can update the off-line 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 may, in some circumstances, 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 may 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. Spouse's may need an ID to access their family line and, if spouses are not comfortable in using each other's ID's then, a user may need to request a 2nd ID in order to be able to view their spouse's living cousins. 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

Personal information collected by me in trust (email/street addresses, phone numbers, etc.) or as a result of an application for membership, a suggestion/comment, or from our visitors guestbook, will not be divulged to any person or entity for any purpose whatsoever unless we are legally bound to prevent or detect a crime. You should be aware, however, that much of this information is already in the public domain and may be readily available to others using internet search engines (e.g., Yahoo People Search, Google.com, Birthday.com).

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  Terms of Use

• This site is owned and operated by Mitchell Family Online . The term "you" will refer to any person viewing the website content using the URL http://mfo.me.uk.
• The Mitchell Family Online website contains copyrighted material and other proprietary information including, but not limited to, text, photos, and graphics. The entire contents of this site, including the title logo, are copyrighted as a collective work and all rights are reserved.
• All of the pages located within the domain http://mfo.me.uk 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:
  
  "Mitchell Family Online," http://mfo.me.uk.

  .... or of the main section you are referring to; for example:
  
  "The Sinking of the SS Marquette" on the Mitchell Family Online web site at http://mfo.me.uk for information pertaining to the death of John Partrick Tunkin on 23 October 1915.

• 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.
  
  

  Restrictions

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

• The Mitchell Family Online 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. Members accounts will be terminated immediately if log-in information is passed to an unconnected third party, or if any abuse of privilege is identified.
  
• 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.
  
• Guest accounts have read-only access.
  
• The IP address of any access to this website is always logged.
  
• The website owners decision in all matters is final.

  Disclaimers

• 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 Mitchell Family Online 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 Mitchell Family Online website or it's owners, agents or data suppliers, 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 absolute, complete or 100% accurate.
• If you do not agree with any of the aformentioned actual or impled Policies or Terms and Conditions, you must leave this site now. Click here to do that now.

  ... and finally

We hope that you enjoy your visit to our website and that you find it interesting and fulfilling. We are always pleased to hear from visitors, so please feel free to leave any comments in our Guestbook.

If you have any questions regarding our Privacy Policy or Terms of Use, please get in touch.

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