What we collect
- Your account (name, email, date of birth, password hash).
- Your heritage record (country, state, town, village, clan, compound, surname, native names). Every field is optional.
- Your family tree entries (ancestor names, dates, relations you added).
- Your communities, messages, posts, reactions.
- Verification records (what you asked to verify, whether it was approved).
- Wallet balance and credit transactions.
- Server logs (IP, browser, timestamps) for security and abuse response.
What visibility settings do
Every sensitive field on your Heritage Profile has its own visibility setting: Public / Community / Connections / Family only / Private. Your maiden names, your compound, your lineage, and your family tree are Private or Family only by default. Nothing gets shared with another member unless you decide it should.
What we do NOT do
- We do not sell your genealogy, relationship, or family data to advertisers.
- We do not compare your family history with anyone else without both of you consenting first.
- We do not show your maiden name, compound, or lineage to another member without your consent.
- We do not build advertising profiles from your record.
Third parties who see anything
- Our hosting provider (Hostinger) stores the database and files.
- Our mail provider sends transactional email (verification, digests).
- PayPal sees a transaction id, amount, and your PayPal email at payment time.
- The Research Assistant AI provider sees the question you ask + the specific record fields your question references — nothing else.
Your rights
- Access: request a copy of everything on your account from Settings.
- Correction: edit any field you added.
- Deletion: delete your account and we remove your data after a short grace period.
- Portability: your data export is a machine-readable JSON bundle.
Cookies
We use a small set of first-party cookies to keep you signed in and to remember your preferences. We do not use tracking or advertising cookies. If we ever add analytics, we choose a privacy-preserving provider and honour Do Not Track.
Contact
Privacy questions: hello@heritagemingle.com.