Partly due to successful UK television programmes such as Who Do You Think You Are and DNA Journey (and similar ones around the globe) and with genealogical data being easier to obtain with the advent of websites such as Ancestry, Find My Past and others, there has been a significant increase in interest in genealogy as a hobby. People are becoming increasingly protective over their personal data, and are often surprised and shocked to discover that personal documents such as their own birth and marriage certificates are available for almost anyone to obtain a copy of.

There has been a lot said regarding the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe, and other countries have similar laws in place too – however, GDPR rules apply only to living individuals.
Furthermore, there is an exemption in the Regulation, whereby it “does not apply to the processing of personal data by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity and thus with no connection to a professional or commercial activity”.
This includes use for “scientific or historical research purposes” – which perfectly describes what I am doing.

All that said, I have adopted the following principles for displaying personal data on our websites, which are very similar to most family history sites.

Lineage
The data I display will only relate to that person and any partner(s) they may have had.
There is no information about parentage, siblings or children displayed (or even stored) online.

Generation 46 and earlier
The latest birth year I have for Generation 46 is 1928 and I believe (sadly) that there are none of this generation with us still – with my apologies to any who are still here.
As such, I will freely show any/all information I hold for these people on our websites.

Generation 47 and later
I will only display the full data where I have a record of the sad event of them passing or that 100 years have passed since their birth (i.e. that in all probability they have passed but I simply do not have a record of that date).
Otherwise, I will only display the first name and surname (as at birth) – less than is available to be found from a 5 minute research on Ancestry or a general internet search.
Where I have data but have redacted it, you will see the symbols “xx-0-xx” or “x00x” – just as an indication that there is data available.
The redaction takes place before any data is loaded to the website, so even if hackers attacked, there’s nothing for them to find.

Click here for more information about our Generations.

Overrides
I have created the ability for an individual to request that their full information IS displayed.
I have applied this to my own data – please contact me if you would like to have your full data displayed as well.

Charts
As has been the case for a while now, the only charts that are freely available online are the so-called Primary Charts that give data only down to Generation 46. This remains the case – but people who wish to look at their OWN Secondary Chart can contact me to obtain a copy.

Click here for more information about our Charts.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any concerns with any of the above – there is a “Contact” option on the Menu.