Terms and Conditions / Privacy Policy
This page presents the Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy, Copyright Statement, and Software Policy for the Gazlay Family History website.
Terms and Conditions
PLEASE READ THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THIS WEBSITE.
Introduction
Welcome to the Gazlay Family History website available at www.gazlayfamilyhistory.org (referred to as the “Site” or “Website”). This Site is owned and operated by Lee Gazlay.
The terms “us”, “our”, and “we” refer to the owners and operators, collectively and separately, of the Gazlay Family History Website. The terms “you” and “your” refer to the Site user, including any person viewing or using the Website content in any manner or form, including computerized, mobile, facsimile, and in print.
In using this Website, you warrant that you have had sufficient opportunity to access these Terms and Conditions, and that you have read, accepted, will comply with, and agree to be bound by the Terms and Conditions contained herein, and any changes thereto. If you do not agree, then you may not use this Site and you may not use any of the data or information contained within this Site.
We may change these Terms and Conditions at any time, and any changes will be effective immediately upon posting on the Site. You agree to review the Terms and Conditions posted on this Site each time you use the Site so that you are aware of any changes made to the Terms and Conditions. Your continued use of the Gazlay Family History Website will mean you accept the changes to the Terms and Conditions.
Restrictions
The Information on this Website, including names, dates, places, statements, opinions, images, documents and materials (“Information”) is intended to be used freely by researchers for personal, non-commercial use that is not meant to generate income or money.
You may not use this Site or any Information contained in this Site for any illegal activity, including but not limited to plagiarism, copyright infringement, identity theft, and identity fraud.
If you have been charged a fee to access this Site or any pages that originate from this Site, or know of another website that is doing so, or that is reproducing information from this Site for a fee, please contact us using the information on the Contact page.
Limitation of Liability and Disclaimer
The Information on this Site is for general information, research, and/or educational purposes only. The Information does not take into account your specific needs, objectives or circumstances. Any reliance you place on the Information, and any use of the documents on the Site, is at your own risk. If you are not satisfied with any part of the Site or these Terms and Conditions, you should cease using the Site.
Information and Documents: You acknowledge that the Information on this Site may contain mistakes, inaccuracies and/or errors to the fullest extend permissible by law. You should carefully review any Information accessed or created through the Site to ensure that it does not contain any mistakes, inaccuracies or errors. While the Information contained within the Site is periodically updated, no guarantee is given that the Information is correct, complete, and/or up-to-date. While we have not and will not intentionally introduce or include viruses or other malware on the Site, we give no warranty, indemnity or guarantee that the documents, Information, or Site are free of viruses and malware.
General: To the extent permitted by law, we exclude all express or implied representations, conditions, guarantees, warranties and terms relating to the Information and these Terms and Conditions, except as set out in these Terms and Conditions. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not and will not be liable or responsible for any expenses, losses, costs or damages (whether direct or indirect) caused to or incurred by (i) any user of the Information or the Site; or (ii) any person named or referred to in the Site; including damages for actual or perceived identity theft, and damages for loss of use and/or loss of data arising out of the performance of the Site.
Indemnity: You are liable for and agree to indemnify, defend and hold us harmless for and against any and all claims, liabilities, suits, actions and expenses, including costs of litigation and reasonable legal costs, resulting directly or indirectly from: (i) any Information that is not accurate, up to date or complete or is misleading or a misrepresentation; (ii) any breach of these Terms and Conditions; (iii) and any misuse, reference to, or reliance on the Information; from or by you.
Sources: All of the Information, including names, dates, places, transcriptions, writings, and other research located on this Site, have been acquired through painstaking genealogical research and undertaken by the owners of the Website (unless otherwise indicated). We have not, and will not, use data scraping tools or techniques to acquire from other websites any of the Information contained on this Site. We reserve all rights to the expression of Information on this Website. Citations to the sources of the Information used on this website are provided so that you may independently evaluate the information contained in those sources.
Use of Information: For those who wish to use the Information on this Site for personal, non-commercial purposes, we ask only that you give credit by citing the page URL address (https://…) that contains the information you are using, and/or the name and address of the Home Page of the Website. For example:**
**Gazlay Family History, https://www.gazlayfamilyhistory.org
Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy statement details our privacy practices and is incorporated into, and subject to the terms of, the Gazlay Family History website’s Terms and Conditions.
Introduction
The primary purpose of family history research is to document the ancestors and descendants of individuals, a family or families, to preserve their heritage and to share the information with others in the hope that it furthers their knowledge and aids in their research efforts. As a minimum, this information includes an individual’s name and the date/location of birth, marriage, and death. Excluding all information about living individuals, as is sometimes done particularly with online genealogies and family histories, totally defeats this purpose.
It is a well-established fact that public domain information does include names, relationships, dates, and places. Privacy law does not apply to public domain information. Certain laws, however, do provide protections for persons younger than 18 years old to prevent the exploitation of minors.
Although identity and credit card fraud are very real problems in today’s society, the paranoia regarding disclosure of name, relationship, birth, marriage, and death information about living individuals on genealogy/family history/family tree websites is unfounded. Thieves can easily obtain this and other information from numerous public records, just as resourceful family historians can do.
What identity thieves really want are social security numbers, bank/credit card account numbers and passwords, which they obtain mostly from discarded or stolen paper documents. Identity thieves also use internet and telephone scams and other techniques that trick a person into revealing sensitive/protected data. Still others find this information on stolen laptops or by hacking into the websites and databases of financial institutions and other businesses. This kind of sensitive/protected data about living individuals certainly has no place on any genealogy/family history/family tree website, and the Gazlay Family History Website contains no such sensitive/protected data.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) maintains a national file of death information, the Death Master File (DMF). Under the Freedom of Information Act, the SSA is required to disclose the DMF to members of the public. Although the Death Master File is not available online from the SSA, numerous private organizations have obtained the file and provide it online, often calling it the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) or similar name. Widespread publication of the social security numbers (SSNs) and associated identity information of deceased individuals (including name, birth and death dates) actually serves as a deterrent to identity thieves, because social security numbers are never reused, and banks and other financial institutions can freely consult the SSDI to halt any attempt to impersonate a deceased individual using their SSN. Therefore, including a deceased individual’s SSN in a genealogy or family history is both legal and totally appropriate. In fact, the SSN should always be included in any properly formed citation to the SSDI.
Mr. Richard A. Pence, a professional genealogist and pioneer in computer genealogy, challenged anyone to present a documented case where genealogical information was the source of identity theft/fraud. No one over a 23 year span through June 2009 was able to present any actual case. One case people cited involved the use of Rootsweb.com to obtain the names, birth dates and social security numbers of deceased individuals. The perpetrators then used that information to access the credit card accounts of those deceased individuals. In response, Mr. Pence correctly pointed out that “…it’s just one more example of credit companies blaming “identity theft” for their failure to follow even the simplest of procedures in its verification processes.”1 Besides, the same information—name, birth date, and SSN of deceased individuals—is publicly available directly from the SSDI.
1Rootsweb threaded mail archive (APG-L), 20 June 2009, http://listsearches.rootsweb.com/th/read/APG/2009-06/1245555006
Banks, credit card companies, and other financial institutions routinely use security questions and answers as authentication for users to gain access to their accounts. Institutions that use questions based on publicly available family information (such as mother’s maiden name, or father’s middle name) are putting their customers’ accounts at risk. Worse, users who provide the actual answers to such questions when setting up their accounts are putting their own accounts at risk. Institutions don’t need the actual answers, but really only want answers that a stranger wouldn’t be likely to know. As long as the user remembers the initial answer they provided, the answer can be almost anything. Better yet, when given the choice, users should select security questions that are not based on family information.
Privacy Practice
With due consideration for privacy laws and public domain information, balanced against the inherent purpose of family history research to share information, our practice is as follows:
a. For those living individuals younger than 18 years old: only names and relationships to other individuals will be displayed online. Dates, places, biographical and other details for living individuals younger than 18 years old will not be intentionally displayed online.
b. For those living individuals age 18 years and older, and for deceased individuals: information regarding birth, marriage, divorce, death, burial, adoption, relationship to other individuals, biographical details, general employment, residence, military service, religion, ethnicity, education, affiliations, memberships, hobbies, interests, and anecdotes, especially including information that is available from public records, will be displayed online.
c. For all individuals, information that is libelous or defamatory will not be intentionally displayed on the Site.
d. We will not remove names, dates, relationships to other individuals, or any other information already in the database and/or displayed on the Site. Our policy is also not to respond to these types of requests.
e. We do not collect any information on users while they browse our Website.
f. We do not set cookies.
Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2009-2024 by Lee Gazlay. All rights reserved.
The Gazlay Family History website contains original authorship material including, but not limited to, writings, artwork, photographs, and other forms of authorship protected by copyright. The entire contents of this Site, including original authorship material, are copyrighted as a collective work under the United States copyright laws and all rights are reserved.
No copyright is claimed in the excerpts, quotations, and small portions of previously copyrighted works that are reproduced on this Website, either with or without citation, and to the extent that material may appear to be infringed, we assert that such alleged infringement is permissible under fair use principles in U.S. copyright laws. If you believe material has been used in an unauthorized manner, please contact us using the information on the Contact page. Please note that copyright protection does not extend to any ideas, systems, or factual information conveyed in a work, only to the way in which authors have expressed such information.
Acknowledgements of the sources of copyrighted material, works in the public domain, and ideas, systems or factual information not otherwise protected by copyright, are provided as citations on our Website when the sources are known. Any omission of acknowledgement of such sources is unintentional.
Software Policy
The software that runs this Website consists of highly customized PHP pages, CSS style sheets, and related web technology, and a complex MYSQL database, collectively called the “program.”
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
Contact us for more information or to request a copy of this program.