Privacy

Privacy Policy

The North of Ireland Family History Society is a voluntary, non-profit making charity registered with the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland (NIC106071). The objects of the Society are to promote and encourage the public and personal study of worldwide family history, genealogy, heraldry and local history with particular reference to the North of Ireland.

We record and hold the following information on members when they join the Society:

• Name
• Address
• Email address
• Phone number
• Category of membership
• Gift Aid Declaration.

This information is held securely and is retained for a period of seven years for accounting purposes.

Associate members can pay by PayPal or credit/debit card or members and non-members can purchase books and booklets published by the Society or sold on behalf of it but the Society uses the PayPal online payments system and we do not hold bank details. Information about the purchase is held for seven years for accounting purposes.

We use the information we hold on individual members to deliver services we are contracted to provide you with and which you are entitled to receive as a member of the Society. This includes contacting you with details of events and training courses organised by the Society, posting you copies of the Society’s journal, North Irish Roots, sending you newsletters, delivering a look-up service from the Society’s Research Centre and providing you with other membership services and benefits we believe may be of interest to you.

Details of the relevant branch members are provided to branch officers in a secure manner to enable them to provide a programme of branch events.

We do not pass on your personal information to third parties other than for the specific purposes of providing you with the membership benefits and services to which you are entitled or where we may be required to do so by law.

We currently share membership data with the following external organisations:

• The printer – for the purpose of despatching the Society’s journal. This information is provided in the format of self-adhesive labels rather than an electronic file for security reasons.
• JSTOR – for the purpose of providing membership access to back copies of the Society journal, and as a membership benefit, their full Irish Collection. Their privacy policy is available at https://www.ithaka.org/privacypolicy.
• MailChimp – for the purpose of distributing group emails. Their privacy policy is available at https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/.
• Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) – to enable Gift Aid claims to be processed.

On our website, www.nifhs.org, the only members’ information we hold is membership numbers. Our website has a ‘Members Only’ section where we have resources to aid our members in their personal research. Our policy is to only post records there to which the ‘100 year rule’ has been applied (ie the individuals concerned were born more than 100 years ago) and for which we have permission from the data owner.

Cookies may be used by our website to enable certain privacy and log-in capabilities. A cookie is a small file placed on your computer. You have the ability to delete cookie files from your computer at any time or avoid cookies by configuring your browser to reject them or to notify you when a cookie is being placed on your computer. Detailed guidance is available at https://www.aboutcookies.org/.

Our social networking presence is governed by the privacy policies of the various social networking platforms which we use – currently Facebook and Twitter.

If any person wishes to check the personal information which the Society holds about them then they are entitled to see this on request and to correct or update it. It is important that members notify us of any changes of address or other contact information so that we can continue to provide you with the services that you are entitled to receive. Updates can be sent to membership@nifhs.org. Also contact us if you no longer wish to receive our services.

The Society runs the North of Ireland DNA Project which is open to both members and non-members. It operates on a platform provided by Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) and their privacy policy is available at https://www.familytreedna.com/privacy-policy. In administering the project, we give priority to protecting your privacy and to the confidentiality of your personal data. The only personal data we hold is that relevant to meeting the published goals of our project and which has been made available to us by FTDNA in the format that you have specified under Privacy and Sharing settings or which you have given us directly by email or by post. In our administration of this project we endeavour to comply with the most recent guidance issued by ISOGG (https://isogg.org/wiki/ISOGG_Project_Administrator_Guidelines), by FTDNA (https://www.familytreedna.com/learn/project-administration/gap-guidelines-ftdna-projects/) and with the Genetic Genealogy Standards (http://www.geneticgenealogystandards.com/). If you have any concerns regarding the handling of your personal data it may be better to forward your issue directly to FTDNA. However, you can submit queries to dna@nifhs.org.

Subject access requests and any queries regarding this Privacy Policy should be forwarded to dpo@nifhs.org.