This Privacy Statement was last updated on July 18, 2006. If you have not reviewed it since that date, please do so. You will not receive any other notice of changes to this statement. | ||
MyHeritage recognizes the potential sensitivity and confidentiality of information that may be placed on member family sites, or uploaded to MyHeritage.com, and is firmly committed to protecting your privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices.
MyHeritage face recognition demo
Photos uploaded by users to the MyHeritage celebrity face recognition demo are not shared with any 3rd party. They remain stored on MyHeritage.com in the member profile of the user who uploaded them. Any user who uploads photos can choose to delete the photos or keep them private so that only he or she can access them.
Users who wish to make use of our "Tell a friend" feature to email their friends a link to a photo they just uploaded with its celebrity resemblances, should be aware that the link to their photo will remain valid for up to 2 days at most, after which it will no longer work. Users are advised against posting links from the celebrity face recognition demo on the Internet, as these links will become invalid within 2 days, or sooner.
MyHeritage family sites
None of the personal, private information that is uploaded or entered on a MyHeritage family site by individual members is viewed by MyHeritage staff, or distributed to others outside of your site, except in rare cases involving reported abuse of our use policies or legal statutes. We do collect some data, always with your knowledge and consent, which is used to personalize the site for your convenience and for the benefit of other family members and friends who are included in your site.
A portion of this data, particularly that which reflects members’ lifestyles and interests, may be used in aggregate statistical form to attract potential sponsors and deliver advertising messages to appropriate users. For instance we may tell a prospective advertiser that 10,000 of our members have indicated an interest in tennis, and then distribute an attractive offer exclusively to those users.
In no case is the personal information about individual members sold or otherwise shared with advertisers, sponsors, partners or other 3rd parties. And under no circumstances is this information collected or distributed in any form without your prior knowledge and consent.
Who will be able to view our private family Web site?
If your family site is set up on MyHeritage as a private site, only those with a valid username and password will have access to your site. Initially, the family site Webmaster (creator) is the only one with access to the site. Typically this Webmaster will invite new members to the site via email, and only recipients of this invitation will be able to gain access to the site after registering as members in MyHeritage. It is then the responsibility of site members to help keep the site secure by offering password access only to appropriate relatives and friends – those they want to have access to the site. Each user is responsible to protect his or her username & password. If your family site is set up on MyHeritage as a public site, then guests can view it without a username and password. A family site can also be set up as a mix between a private and a public site, in which case the private areas of the site as designated by the site Webmaster will be accessible to site members only, and the public areas will be accessible by the general public.
Does MyHeritage ask for personal information?
Yes. MyHeritage asks for your name, email address, and other limited personal information when you sign up to create or participate in a family Web site and to use features such as e-mail, personality profiles, and gift registries. Most of this information may be entered at your option.
How does MyHeritage use my personal information?
Our goal is to provide you with the most personalized, relevant, user-friendly Web experience possible. The primary use of all your personal information is to share it with other family members and friends when they visit your site.
MyHeritage will also use registration and profile information to advise you of new members and new postings to the site, to let you know about new features or other offers of interest from MyHeritage, or to address customer service needs and requests.
In order to make the site more relevant to you we may direct advertising from our sponsors according to the interests of our users. For instance, if you indicate an interest in travel in your member profile, you may see an ad from a travel airline, while your sister, who likes sports, might see an ad for from a sports vendor. Ultimately, this makes the service far more valuable to each family member.
In distributing advertiser or sponsor messages, the advertiser never has access to individual account information. MyHeritage does not sell, rent or otherwise distribute the personal information you provide us. Advertisers simply give us an ad and tell us the type of audience they want to reach (for example, males over 35 years old, or 18-34 year olds interested in outdoor sports). MyHeritage may then display the ad only to users who meet those criteria.
Does MyHeritage request or require any personal financial information?
MyHeritage family sites require a subscription and family sites beyond the Basic free plan require paid subscriptions. To facilitate payment, MyHeritage will request personal credit card information.
Will MyHeritage disclose any of my personal information to third parties?
No. MyHeritage will not disclose any of your personal information, except with your knowledge and consent as described below, or as may be required by law, or to protect the rights or property of MyHeritage.
Most personal information collected by MyHeritage is made available only to other members of your family site, such as in the family address book or member profiles. Other circumstances where limited personal information may be disclosed are specifically described when the data is collected.
MyHeritage does reserve the right to disclose aggregated user statistics, such as "55 percent of our users are female" or "10,000 members indicate an interest in gardening" in order to describe our services to prospective partners, advertisers, and other third parties.
Additionally, if you click away from MyHeritage to visit the site of any third party advertiser or sponsor, you may be asked for your credit card or other personal information in order to purchase or use products and services offered. These companies have their own privacy and data collection practices. MyHeritage has no responsibility or liability for these independent policies. You should therefore review their privacy policies carefully if you have concerns about how your information may be used.
Will MyHeritage use my information for direct mailings?
Only at your option. MyHeritage can automatically send email messages to advise members when new information has been posted to the family Web site. Participating members may also send email to the entire family group or selected individuals, at their discretion. These options are user selectable.
MyHeritage may also occasionally send information about special product and service offerings that we feel may be of interest to you. Only MyHeritage will send you these direct mailings. If you do not want to receive such mailings, you may opt out at any time by deselecting that option in your user profile.
May I refuse to provide personal information to MyHeritage or to accept advertising?
Yes on both counts. Most of the personal information provided to MyHeritage may be offered at your own discretion and is intended for family use only. An email address and password are all that are required to participate in a family site. Naturally, withholding some personal information may compromise the usefulness of the site for other family members. If you are a member of a family site on MyHeritage which is on the Basic free plan, which is advertiser-sponsored, you may not "turn off" the advertising that appears on family Web site pages, but you may opt to be excluded from any email advertising. Family sites on MyHeritage which are on the Silver, Gold and Platinum plans do not display any advertising.
Does MyHeritage use IP Addresses and cookies?
IP Addresses: We do use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, and to administer our Web site. Your IP address is also used to gather broad demographic information such as the geographic distribution of our members.
Cookies: MyHeritage makes limited use of browser cookies to enhance the experience of visiting MyHeritage, for example, to avoid displaying certain messages to you more than once, or to optionally save your logon details on your browser so they won't have to be re-entered by you each time you wish to log in, or to remember the display language you selected last time, so you won't have to pick it again each time you visit the site.
Advertiser Cookies: MyHeritage may post third party advertising banners on personal family Web sites and on MyHeritage general use pages. These ads may contain cookies used primarily to provide data to the advertiser about where visitors are coming from. While we do use cookies in other parts of our Web site as explained above, cookies received with banner ads may or may not be collected or controlled by our company.
Are Chat room dialogues recorded and saved?
Dialogues are not currently collected, stored, or used by the company or others. In the future, MyHeritage may allow family/group site members to save chat sessions for their private use.
What else should I know about privacy?
The following encapsulates a few key issues mentioned in context above:
Member Profiles: and personality profile data is collected at our site at the users’ option. This information may include age and gender plus hobbies, interests, and other personal preferences that can be viewed by other family members who have access to the site. Some of this statistical demographic information may also be used on an aggregate basis to attract advertisers and to deliver offers and information to specific members, or to customize a visitor’s experience. In no case is this information given to a third party. MyHeritage controls the distribution of all information at the site.
Opt-Out: Our site provides users the ability to opt-out of receiving direct the MyHeritage email newsletter which may contain advertising from our partners and sponsors. This option may be selected by any user on the member profile page. We always reserve the right to contact members about service or payment issues, new features to improve the service, etc.
May I delete or deactivate my account and what happens to my personal information if I do?
Yes you may. MyHeritage gives users the following options for removing their information from our database or to no longer receive our service.
- Individual family members may request to be removed from a specific family site through their site Webmaster.
- Individual members may request to be completely removed from MyHeritage and all family sites they are participating in, by requesting this from MyHeritage technical support.
- A Webmaster of a family site may request to delete the entire family site, from MyHeritage technical support.
- If a MyHeritage family site is on the Basic free plan and shows no activity for a full month, email messages will be sent to the Webmaster of that site, and later to its members, advising them that the site may be removed if there is no further activity.
Changes and Modifications
MyHeritage gives users the following options for changing and modifying information previously provided.
- Any member may modify his/her personal information, including passwords at any time by logging into MyHeritage, visiting his or her member profile and editing it, to update the information therein.
- At any time, members may delete or modify information and items such as news, photos, sounds, or other files which they personally have posted to their site. A family site’s Webmaster is able to delete and modify all items submitted by members of the site.
If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your dealings with this Web site, you can contact:
MyHeritage Customer Support
MyHeritage Ltd.
Bnei Atarot 60991
Israel