Your privacy is critically important to us. At the Families in British India Society, we have a few fundamental principles:

  • We are thoughtful about the personal information we ask you to provide and the personal information that we collect about you through the operation of our services.
  • We store personal information for only as long as we have a legitimate reason to keep it.
  • We aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what information on our website is shared publicly (or kept private), indexed by search engines, and permanently deleted.
  • We aim for full transparency on how we gather, use, and share your personal information.

Below is the Families in British India Societies  privacy policy, which incorporates and clarifies these principles. Please familiarize yourself with our policies, and if you have any questions please contact us at [email protected]

What This Policy Covers

This Privacy Policy applies to information that we collect about you when you use:

  • Our websites (including fibis.org, gallery.fibis.org, and wiki.fibis.org);
  • Other products and services that are available on or through our websites

Throughout this Privacy Policy we ‘ll refer to our website and other products and services collectively as “ Services.”

Below we explain how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us.

Information We Collect

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so–for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better.

We collect information in three ways: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our services, and from outside sources. Let ‘s go over the information that we collect.

Information You Provide to Us

It ‘s probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us. The amount and type of information depends on the context and how we use the information. Here are some examples:

  • Basic Account Information: We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your website account. For example, we require individuals who sign up for FIBIS membership subscriptions to provide a username, email address, phone number, name and postal address–and that ‘s it.
  • Public Profile Information: If you have an account with us, we collect the information that you provide for your public profile. For example, if you have a fibis.org account, your username is part of that public profile, along with any other information you put into your public profile. Your public profile is just that–public–so please keep that in mind when deciding what information you would like to include.
  • Transaction and Billing Information: If you buy something from us–a membership subscription, a book, or fact file, for example–you will provide personal and payment information that is required to process the transaction and your payment, such as your name and contact information.
  • Content Information: Depending on the Services you use, you may also provide us with information about you in the published content in the fibis.org website. For example:
    • Comments: If you write a post or comment that includes biographic information about you, we will have that information, and so will anyone with access to the post or comment, if you choose to publish the post publicly. This might be obvious to you…but it ‘s not to everyone! An anonymised string is also created from your email address (also called a hash) and may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
    • Media: Again, an anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/.  
  • Communications with Us: You may also provide us information when you respond to surveys, communicate with our admin team about a support question, or post a question in our forums.

Information We Collect Automatically

We also collect some information automatically:

  • Log Information: Like most online service providers, we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. We collect log information when you use our Services–for example, when you log in or search our website.
  • Usage Information: We collect information about your usage of our Services. For example, we collect information about the actions that site administrators and users perform on a site–in other words, who did what, when and to what thing on a site (e.g., [fibis.org username] posted “ [title of post]” at [time/date]). We also collect information about what happens when you use our Services (e.g., page views, searches at fibis.org, button clicks) along with information about your device (e.g., mobile screen size, name of cellular network, and mobile device manufacturer). We use this information to, for example, provide our Services to you, as well as get insights on how people use our Services, so we can make our Services better.
  • Location Information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people visit our Services from certain geographic regions.
  • Information from Cookies & Other Technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor ‘s computer, and that the visitor ‘s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. The Families in British India Society uses cookies to help us identify and track visitors, usage, and access preferences for our Services. For example:
    • If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
    • If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
    • When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
    • If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
    • Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

For more information about our use of cookies and other technologies for tracking, including how you can control the use of cookies, please  see  here.

What legal basis are we processing the data under?

There are a number of grounds we process your data under and these are:

  • Legitimate interest – as a data controller and for processing your data in ways that our members would reasonably expect us to do in order to fulfil and support the aims of the Families in British India Society. You can read our aims on our about page.  
  • Consent
  • Contractual obligation – we need the information to perform the contract for goods or services you have requested or ordered.
  • Legal – should we be legally required to contact you regarding a purchase or service.

Sharing Information

How We Share Information

We do not sell our users ‘ private personal information.

We share information about you in the limited circumstances spelled out below and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy:

  • Payment: We accept payments through PayPal. When processing payments, some of your data will be passed to PayPal, including information required to process or support the payment, such as the purchase total and billing information. Please see the PayPal Privacy Policy for more details.
  • Independent Contractors: We may disclose information about you to individuals who are our independent contractors that need to know the information in order to help us provide our Services or to process the information on our behalf. We require our independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for personal information that we share with them.
  • Third Party Vendors: We may share information about you with third party vendors who need to know information about you in order to provide their services to us. This group includes vendors that help us provide our Services to you (like payment providers that process your credit and debit card information) and those that help us understand and enhance our Services (like analytics providers). We require vendors to agree to privacy commitments in order to share information with them.
  • As Required by Law: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request.
  • To Protect Rights and Property: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of the Families In British India Society, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose information related to the emergency without delay.
  • Business Transfers: In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company, or in the unlikely event that the Families in British India Society goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.
  • With Your Consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction.
  • Aggregated and De-Identified Information: We may share information that has been aggregated or reasonably de-identified, so that the information could not reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Services. .

Information Shared Publicly

Information that you choose to make public is disclosed publicly. That means, of course, that information like your public profile, posts, other content that you make public on our website, are all available to others. Public information may also be indexed by search engines or used by third parties. Please keep all of this in mind when deciding what you would like to share.

Security

All personal information is held on a secure server and includes contact information which you have provided yourself;  name, postal address, e-mail, telephone number together with your type of subscription. While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so.

Choices

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

  • Limit the Information that You Provide: If you have an account with us, you can choose not to provide the optional account information, profile information, and transaction and billing information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our Services–for example, paid membership subscription–may not be accessible.
  • Opt-Out of blog posts by email: You may opt out of receiving blog posts by email from us. Just click unsubscribe at the bottom of the email. If you opt out of these messages, we may still send you other messages, like those about your account and legal notices.
  • Set Your Browser to Reject Cookies: At this time, the Families in British India Society does not respond to “ do not track” signals across all of our Services. However, you can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies before using Families in British India Society websites, with the drawback that certain features of our websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.

Your rights regarding your Personal Information

Under the Data Protection law, you have a number of rights with respect to your personal information, which are:

  • Correcting your Information – You are entitled to have your personal information updated to ensure it is up to date and accurate. You can update your personal details through your ‘My Account ‘ page or by sending us an email to [email protected]
  • Withdrawing Consent – You have the right to withdraw your consent to any processing that is currently being done under your consent. Consent can be withdrawn by emailing [email protected]
  • Obtaining a copy of your Information – You have the right to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you. You can do this by emailing [email protected]
  • Deleting your information – You can request that we delete personal information in certain circumstances. You can do this by emailing [email protected].
  • Data Portability – You have the right to ask us to transfer the personal information that you have given us to another controller.
  • Restricting Processing – You can request a restriction on the processing of your data in some limited circumstances. Examples are concerns over data accuracy or we no longer need to hold your data but you have requested its retention by us to aid you in a legal matter. You can do this by contacting [email protected]
  • Right to object to Processing – You have the right to request that we stop processing your data for marketing purposes and in other limited circumstances such as asking us not to process your data by wholly automated means or not to analyse your information for targeted content etc. (also known as profiling). You can action any of these rights by emailing [email protected]

Other Things You Should Know

Transferring Information

The Families in British India Society is a worldwide service. By accessing or using the Services or otherwise providing information to us, you consent to the processing, transfer, and storage of information in and to the U.K. and other countries, which may have rights and protections that are different from those in your home country.

Ads and Analytics Services Provided by Others

Ads appearing on any of our Services may be delivered by advertising networks. Other parties may also provide analytics services via our Services. These ad networks and analytics providers may set tracking technologies (like cookies) to collect information about your use of our Services and across other websites and online services. These technologies allow these third parties to recognize your device to compile information about you or others who use your device. This information allows us and other companies to, among other things, analyze and track usage, determine the popularity of certain content, and deliver advertisements that may be more targeted to your interests. Please note this Privacy Policy only covers the collection of information by the Families in British India Society and does not cover the collection of information by any third party advertisers or analytics providers.

FIBIS DNA Project

The FIBIS DNA Project is hosted on the FamilytreeDNA website. You do not buy your test from the Families in British India Society or give your data to us. Your contract is with FamilytreeDNA and your data is stored on their servers. Please read the project privacy policy on the project page at https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/fibis/about/background

One More Thing: This Policy Is Available Under a Creative Commons Sharealike License

This privacy policy is adapted from the one made available under a Creative Commons Sharealike license by  Automattic. See Automattic ‘s privacy policy here.

Right of complaint to the Regulator for Data Protection

The data protection laws in the UK are regulated and enforced by the Information Commissioner ‘s Office (ICO). Each individual has the right to raise a concern/complaint to the ICO if they have any concerns about how their personal information and/or privacy is treated. You can do this via the ICO ‘s website

Call the ICO helpline on 0303 123 1113
Email [email protected]

Postal address:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow, Cheshire,
SK9 5AF

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, the Families in British India Society may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. We encourage visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to this Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the change log below, and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice (such as adding a statement to our homepage or sending you a notification through e-mail or your dashboard). Your continued use of the Services after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your consent to such change.

Change log

  • 23 May 2018: Policy created.