Privacy Statement

Arborealis is a personal family history website which also publishes information about related local history topics and provides transcripts of historical records. This site is the personal and intellectual property of Alison Kilpatrick, the editor. Alison is the only person involved in the day-to-day administration of this site. There are no employees or volunteers. Please refer to About Arborealis for more information about this site and what we do.

Publication of Arborealis is a volunteer activity. At this time, we do not engage in any commercial activities. We think it is important to tell our users what personal information is collected, how that information is used, who has access to that data, and the rights of site users. We also provide information about the Cookie Policy and the Terms & Conditions for visiting Arborealis.

Collection of personal information :

Users can visit Arborealis without revealing any personal information about themselves. However, technical information, such as the date of your visit, the country from which a search of Arborealis was made, pages viewed, and mode of referral to this website (e.g., by Google Search or an external link), is stored on Arborealis‘s allocated disk space on WordPress.com servers. This data might be used to analyze traffic patterns, improve this website, protect our users’ privacy,† safeguard our investment and reputation from malicious internet activity, and identify technological issues in order to resolve those problems. Most web hosting companies offer these statistical analyses, or aggregate data, for website management. None of these data contain information which is personally identifiable. In any event, we will not share any information collected for website management with third parties whether by sale, gift, trade, or any other method, unless required by law or legal proceeding, or to prove or protect legal rights.

† No method of transmission over the internet or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. However, we will take all reasonable precautions to safeguard e-mail addresses, names, and correspondence, including physical and organizational controls, purchased data protection services, and up-to-date tools for the prevention of unauthorized access and data tampering, strong passwords, anti-ransomware security, and protection against viruses, malware, and other threats. In addition, our web hosting service, WordPress.com,™ operated by Automattic, describes a comprehensive approach in their security measures in How we protect your site and data .

If you subscribe to notifications about new blog articles, then we collect your e-mail address for the purpose of sending you such notifications from time to time. We will store this personal information until you opt out of receiving notifications. At that time, you might also request that your name and e-mail address be deleted from our contact list.

We will maintain your personal data so long as it is needed for the purposes for which it was collected, for example, in order to conduct e-mail correspondence or to send notifications about new blog articles. Your personal data is created, stored, and transmitted securely in electronic format. The only person who has access to any personal information, as described above, is the editor of Arborealis, Alison Kilpatrick.

We will not share any information collected by e-mail with third parties whether by sale, gift, trade, or any other method, unless required by law or legal proceeding, or to prove or protect legal rights. We do not feature third-party advertisements which might serve as gateways to commercial sites. At this date, we also do not participate in social sharing services. Neither do we solicit donations, although the investment in computer equipment and supplies, travel and accommodation, subscription fees, memberships, &c., incurred to present this website are considerable.

Personal information which you choose to share during our correspondence would be held in the strictest of confidence. Examples might include unsolicited information such as personal news, your opinions, plans for a trip to an international archive, or difficulties encountered with your research. Not only would we not disclose such personal information, we would only share your research questions and objectives with your written permission. The same courtesy and collegial respect are expected of you, in return.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under sixteen years old. If this were to occur, we would take steps to delete that child’s personal information as quickly as possible. Only if a child under the age of sixteen years has the permission of their parent or guardian may they use the contact form to address enquiries or requests to the editor of Arborealis.

Contact the editor :

Arborealis will endeavour to ensure that any personal information collected is accurate and complete. Individuals may request copies of, and corrections, to their person information by making a request in writing to the editor of Arborealis via the contact form.

In publishing family histories to this website, we do not include the names or other personal information about living individuals. However, if we have made an error in this regard, please contact us.

If you write to the editor/owner of this website using the contact page, your message is routed from WordPress.com’s server to the editor’s e-mail account at arborealis.ca. Your name and e-mail address, and the content of the message will be stored by Arborealis in order to reply to the message, to study such genealogical or local history information shared by you, to post such information which might relate to the family and local history objectives of this website, and to track similar requests for the purpose of genealogical and local history research and analysis, only. We will store personal information collected by e-mail only for so long as we would use it to correspond by e-mail or for family history research and local history studies purposes.

If you wish to know whether personal information has been collected from or about you, how we have used your personal information, if we have disclosed your personal data and to whom (which we would not do unless legally required to do so), or if you would like your data to be modified or deleted, please contact the editor .

Waiver re: third-party websites :

This website contains links to other websites which we think might interest our readers. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, we do not have any control over the content, functionality, accuracy, completeness, or privacy policy of those or any other websites. We do not necessarily agree with the opinions expressed on other websites. Since this privacy statement applies only to Arborealis, you should consult the privacy statements or policies featured on those websites. We do not track visitors to Arborealis over time and across third-party websites.

WordPress.com’s Cookie Policy applies to this website in order for Arborealis to perform basic functions and operate certain features, and to tally site statistics regarding numbers of visitors to Arborealis, as well as the number from high-level geographic locations (countries). Please refer to the segment entitled, Controlling Cookies, if you wish to restrict cookies or prevent them from being set.

At Arborealis, we purchase an annual WordPress.com plan that provides our visitors with an advertisement-free experience. Therefore, neither WordPress nor third party advertisers are collecting your data from adverts when you visit our site.

Arborealis has not placed cookies or tracking technologies such web beacons or pixels on any part of this site.

Terms and Conditions :

By using this website, users agree that this Privacy Statement, together with the sections entitled Terms and Conditions, Cautionary notes, Citing your sources, and Copyright notice, constitute the terms and conditions in toto for Arborealis.

If you have any complaints about how we collect or use your personal information, as discussed above, please contact us so that we can try to resolve the issue.

We hope that all major components of a sound privacy statement have been presented here. Minor changes to this Privacy Statement might be made occasionally, and readers are advised to check this page now and again. Your continued use of this website after any changes are made will constitute your acceptance of those changes.

Respectfully,

Alison Kilpatrick
Editor, Arborealis.

End notes :

Source citation for this page: Kilpatrick, Alison. “Privacy statement.” Published to Arborealis, online at arborealis.ca/about/privacy-statement/; accessed [date].

Updated 13th Dec. 2023.

Arborealis