NIFHS is committed to respecting and protecting your privacy. This includes your need and your right to know what we do with the personal information you share with us. It also guides our Society’s policies regarding the management of this data, including how the information is collected, processed, and for what purposes.
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.
What do we use your information for?
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.
If any person wishes to check the personal information which the Society holds about them, they are entitled to see this on request and to correct or update it.
Details of relevant members are provided to branch officers and other Society volunteers in a secure manner to enable them to provide a programme of branch events or to carry out their specific roles.
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. Members can log into their account to amend their details or cancel their membership, or email Membership enquiries from our Contact page.
The only members’ information we show on our website 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.
Social Networks
Our social networking presence is governed by the privacy policies of the various social networking platforms which we use. These include but are not limited to Facebook, YouTube, X, BlueSky, Instagram and Threads.
Third Parties and External Organisations
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.
DNA Data
The Society runs DNA Projects, open to both members and non-members. These are operated 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 in your FTDNA account 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 our DNA team via a general enquiry on our Contact page.
Enquiries
Any enquiries regarding this Privacy Policy should be addressed to:
The Data Protection Officer
The North of Ireland Family History Society
Unit C4, Valley Business Centre
67 Church Road
Newtownabbey
County Antrim
BT36 7LS
Or email the Society’s Data Protection Officer via a General enquiry on our Contact page.