The short version: we collect only what you choose to send us, and we use it to answer you and, if you hire us, to research your family. We don't sell it or share it for advertising. The site sets no tracking cookies, and the few things it saves in your own browser stay there. We follow set rules to keep living people off the site, apart from a few public figures in our notable-family profiles, and families can ask us to remove a record.
What we collect · Cookies and your browser · How we use it · Who helps us · Keeping living people off the site · Removing a record · Seeing or deleting your information
What we collect
What you send us. When you use one of our forms or email us, we get what you type:
- Your name and email address, and your phone number if you give it.
- Family details you choose to share, such as names, dates and places for parents, grandparents and other relatives, and anything else you tell us.
- The page you were on when you sent the form, so we know which family you were looking at.
If you hire us. Everything you send for your project, which can include a family tree file, photos, documents, notes about living relatives, and a shipping address for a printed book. When you pay, Square (or Venmo, if you asked to use it) tells us your name, email, what you paid for, and the card type and last four digits. We never see your full card or bank account number.
What our web host sees. Cloudflare hosts this site. Like any web host, it receives your IP address, your browser type, the page you asked for and the page that sent you there, each time your browser loads a page. Cloudflare uses this to deliver the site and to block bots and attacks, and our security tools may show us the IP address of traffic they block. Cloudflare also gives us visit counts through Cloudflare Web Analytics, which doesn't use cookies, doesn't follow you to other sites, and never sees your name or anything you type into a form.
Searches. Database and family-tree searches run in your own browser, which loads our data files by the first letters of the surname. Some pages put the name you looked up in the page address (like /family-tree/?q=Anna+Novak), and Cloudflare sees page addresses the way any web host does.
Cookies and your browser
We don't use advertising, tracking cookies or tracking pixels, and our own pages set no cookies at all. If Cloudflare needs to check that you're a person and not a bot, it may set a short-lived security cookie (with a name like __cf_bm or cf_clearance). That cookie only keeps the site safe and isn't used for advertising.
Two features save things in your own browser, in its local storage, and only when you use them:
- My Family Tree (/my-tree/) saves the names and years you type and the records you link. It stays in that browser on that device until you press Start over or clear your browser data. It's never sent to us, and we can't see it. On a shared computer, press Start over when you're done.
- The Getting Started form (/start/) saves answers you haven't sent yet so you can finish later, plus a note of the package you paid for. Both are erased when you press Send. Clear my answers erases your answers at any time. Anything unsent is cleared the next time the page is opened after 60 days, so on a shared computer, press Clear my answers when you're done.
Because nothing on the site tracks you, we don't show a cookie banner. If we ever add advertising or analytics that use cookies, we'll update this page first and ask for your consent where the law requires it. We don't track you across other websites, so Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control signals have nothing to switch off here.
How we use it
- To reply to you, and to send a written plan and price if you ask for one. We may follow up once or twice about your question. If you'd rather we didn't, just say so.
- If you hire us, to research your family, write and build what you ordered, take payment, print and ship it, and keep the records our taxes require.
- To keep the site working and secure, and to see which pages are useful.
We never sell your information, rent it or share it for advertising. We don't add you to a mailing list. We won't use your family's story or name on this site or in marketing without your written permission.
Who helps us
We share information only with the services that help us do the work, and only what each one needs:
- Cloudflare hosts and protects the site and counts visits.
- Cloudflare also stores what you send through our website forms, and FormSubmit emails it to our inbox.
- Google runs our email and our online file storage, including backups.
- Square handles payments, and Venmo if you ask to use it.
- Lulu, our book printer, prints and ships hardcover books and gets the name and address each book goes to. A shipping carrier delivers USB drives.
- AI tools help us sort records and draft writing for client projects, so what you send may be processed by that tool's provider to do that work.
- Record websites and archives we search for your project, such as FamilySearch, see the names, dates and places we look up. We don't give them your contact details.
We may also share information if the law requires it, to protect someone's safety or our legal rights, or if the business is ever sold, in which case this policy goes with it.
Your living relatives
You may tell us about relatives who are still living. We use that only privately, for your project, to connect your family to the historical record. Nothing you send us is ever published on this site.
How we keep living people off the site
Our records are meant to be about people who have died. These are the rules we follow:
- Everyone in our search database has a record of their death or burial, is named in a book published before 1931, or comes from a state birth index and was born in 1920 or earlier.
- In family trees, a parent who is only named on a child's record is shown only when the oldest child was born by 1930, unless the parent has a death record of their own. A husband or wife who is only named on someone else's record is shown only when that record says the person was widowed.
- Children who died before age 18, in 1950 or later, aren't named in family trees.
- People known only from a birth record from 1917 on show just their birth year.
- In the 1950 census, someone in a household is named only if they have a death record or were born in 1920 or earlier. Everyone else appears only as their place in the household, like "daughter, 11."
- Trees from our own family's research include only people with a death or burial record, or who were born in 1905 or earlier.
- We never publish Social Security numbers, the addresses of living people, or the names of the people who reported a death on a modern death certificate. The old newspaper notices and county histories we reproduce sometimes give a family's street address or farm from that time, and the 1950 census sheets we link to can show a street address.
Our profiles of well-known Iowa families and companies are the one exception. Some of those people are living public figures, and those profiles draw on what has been publicly reported about them.
Causes of death and military service
We show a cause of death when one of these records gives it, and the page says which one:
- Minnesota death certificates, 2011 to 2020. The cause in the certifier's words. When the manner of death wasn't natural, we show that too (an accident, suicide or homicide, or that it couldn't be determined or was still under investigation), and whether the certificate says tobacco use contributed.
- The Veterans Administration's death file. Its category, natural causes or combat, shown with the veteran's service dates.
- Old newspaper death notices, 1836 to 1925. The cause as the paper printed it.
- Our own family's tree. The cause as our family's research gives it.
Causes are shown for children too, including babies. Family trees leave out the names and dates of children who died young in recent decades, but in our search database a child with a death record is listed by name like anyone else and may show a cause of death. We know a cause of death can be painful to see, so any family member can ask us to remove it and keep the rest of the record.
Removing a record
Email [email protected] with the link to the page and what you'd like removed: a person's whole record, a newspaper notice, a biography, or just the cause of death. You don't have to prove you're related, though we may ask which record you mean. We take it down from our pages, usually within a few days, email you when it's done, and keep it off later updates of the site. If something else on a page bothers you, such as a photograph or a link between two people, tell us and we'll look at it.
We can only remove what's on our own site. Copies on other websites, old copies in search engines, and the original public record are outside our control, though search engines usually drop a removed page within a few weeks.
If you find a record about someone who is still living, tell us and we'll take it down right away.
How long we keep it
- Questions that don't turn into a project: up to two years after our last email, then we delete them, from our email and from the notes and files we keep on our own computer.
- Client projects: we keep your files so we can make corrections or reprints, until you ask us to delete them. Payment records are kept as long as tax rules require.
- Deleted information drops out of our backups as they're replaced.
Seeing or deleting your information
Email us to see what we have, correct it or delete it. We'll do it and confirm by reply. If you're a client, we keep what your agreement needs until the project is finished, then delete it on request, except for payment records we have to keep for taxes. Whatever state or country you live in, you can make these requests.
Keeping it safe
Your information is kept in our email, on our own password-protected computer and in our password-protected cloud storage, and only the person working on your research uses it. No system is perfect. If something goes wrong that affects your information, we'll tell you.
Children
This site is for a general audience and isn't meant for children under 13. We don't knowingly collect information from children under 13, and if we learn we have, we'll delete it.
California and other state privacy laws
Some state laws give residents the right to know what a business collects about them, to have it deleted, and to opt out of its sale or its use for targeted advertising. We don't sell personal information, share it for targeted advertising, or use it to profile anyone, and we honor requests to see or delete information from anyone, wherever they live.
If you're outside the United States
We're based in the United States, and our service providers store information here. By sending us information, you understand it will be handled in the United States under this policy.
Changes and questions
If this policy changes, we'll update the date at the top of this page, and we'll update it before adding anything that tracks visitors. Questions: [email protected].