Privacy Policy

What information we collect and for what purposes

For site visitors (without an account):

When you visit or search on the platform, we automatically process limited technical information necessary for operating the service, keeping it secure, and understanding aggregated use:

• IP address, request date and time, visited page, and basic request data - used for security, abuse prevention, rate limiting, troubleshooting, and aggregated statistics
• Browser and device information, such as user agent, language, and technical form signals where provided - used for compatibility, diagnostics, and anti-abuse checks
• Search terms, filters, and navigation context - used to return results, detect abnormal use, and improve search quality
• Cookie-free analytics events - used to understand page traffic and performance without advertising profiles

For registered users:

If you choose to create an account on Genealogica, we collect and store the following personal information necessary for account management and service provision:

• Name, username, forum display name, and e-mail address - used for account identification, service-related communications, public profile features, and password recovery
• Password, stored only in protected form, e-mail verification status, remember-me option, and two-factor authentication settings where enabled - used to secure access to your account
• Credit balances and usage, account activity, favorites, public profile settings, and notification preferences - used to provide the platform features you request
• Submitted content, comments, publication proposals, burial and document contributions, related metadata, and moderation or review history - used to operate the research and community features of the platform
• Forum access data, such as the details needed to connect your Genealogica account with your forum profile, keep login secure, and handle account changes

For requests sent via the contact form:

When you contact us via the contact form available on the site or by e-mail, we collect your name, e-mail address, and the content of the message sent, strictly for the purpose of responding to your request and resolving any issues or questions.

Legal basis for data processing

We process your personal data based on the following legal grounds provided by GDPR:

• The necessity of providing the service you requested, including account access, credits, forum access, search, contributions, and communications about your account
• Compliance with legal obligations and the handling of rights requests, reports, disputes, or requests from competent authorities
• Our legitimate interest in ensuring platform security, preventing abuse and fraud, protecting community continuity, and improving the quality and reliability of the services offered
• Your consent where we explicitly request it, such as optional public profile settings or specific user-submitted content confirmations

Sharing data with third parties

Your data may be disclosed only in the following strict and limited circumstances:

• Upon express and legally justified request of competent authorities (judicial institutions, police bodies, or other authorities empowered by law), in strict compliance with applicable legislation
• To essential technical service providers, such as hosting, infrastructure, storage, e-mail, and backup providers, who act as processors or equivalent service providers and are expected to protect confidentiality and security
• To security and anti-abuse providers used for human verification, registration protection, network reputation checks, and infrastructure protection, such as Cloudflare Turnstile and ipapi.is
• To privacy-friendly analytics infrastructure (Umami Analytics), configured for aggregated site statistics and not for advertising or cross-site marketing profiles

All potential data transfers to third parties are carried out with adequate protection guarantees, in compliance with GDPR requirements and applicable national legislation.

Data retention period

Your personal data is stored for the following periods, depending on the data category and the purpose for which it was collected:

• Active accounts: data is kept as long as your account remains active and you use the platform services
• Inactive accounts: after 24 consecutive months without login, the account may be reviewed for deactivation, anonymization, or deletion, with advance notice where reasonably possible
• Security and anti-abuse logs, including IP addresses or hashes where applicable: normally kept for up to 12 months, unless a longer period is necessary for security, investigation, legal obligations, or defense of claims
• Requests sent via contact form: kept until the request is resolved and, where necessary, for up to 24 months for follow-up, accountability, or dispute handling
• Data needed for forum access is kept while the account exists and, where necessary, for a reasonable security and accountability period afterward
• Published contributions, forum posts, comments, archival references, and moderation history may be retained as part of the community, historical, research, or security record, with personal account identifiers removed or anonymized where appropriate

You can request erasure or anonymization of your personal data at any time. We review each request manually so that account data can be removed while respecting legal obligations, platform security, third-party rights, and the continuity of public research or forum contributions.

What are cookies and how we use them

Cookies are small text files stored on your device (computer, phone, tablet) when you visit a website. They are used to remember certain preferences and actions over a period of time, so you don't have to re-enter them every time you return to the site or navigate from one page to another.

The Genealogica Platform uses cookies and similar browser storage that are necessary for authentication, security, fraud prevention, preferences, and requested forum access. We do not use advertising or marketing cookies. The main cookies and similar storage we use are:

• Session cookies: keep the current site or forum session working and are essential for authentication and normal interactions with the platform.
• Security cookie: helps protect forms and account actions from unauthorized requests. It is essential for data security and expires when the session is closed.
• "Remember me" cookie: is activated only if you check the "remember me" option on the login page. It allows maintaining authentication between sessions so you don't need to log in again at every visit.
• Preference storage: remembers functional choices such as selected language and interface theme.
• Registration security cookie: helps limit automated or repeated signups and protect welcome-credit offers from abuse. For the same security purpose, we may combine it with limited technical signup signals and network reputation information, including information supplied by ipapi.is.
• Forum access cookies: the forum uses strictly necessary cookies to keep you logged in, protect the forum, and end access when the related Genealogica account is changed or disabled.

You can delete or block cookies through your browser settings. However, disabling strictly necessary cookies may prevent login, forum access, form submission, language preferences, or security protections from working. Because we currently use only necessary cookies and cookie-free analytics, we do not show a separate cookie-acceptance banner; if optional advertising, marketing, or non-essential tracking cookies are introduced later, we will request consent first.

Data security and protection

We take the protection of your personal data seriously and implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect it against unauthorized access, accidental loss, destruction, or unauthorized disclosure:

• Secure one-way protection of user passwords, so passwords cannot be viewed in clear text even by platform administrators
• Use of secure HTTPS connections for all communications between your browser and our servers, protecting data in transit
• Continuous monitoring of suspicious activities and implementation of automated mechanisms for detecting and blocking unauthorized access attempts
• Regular database backups to prevent accidental information loss
• Strict restriction of access to personal data only to authorized technical personnel who need such access to perform their tasks

However, we must acknowledge that no method of transmission over the internet or method of electronic storage is completely secure or infallible. Although we make every effort to protect your data, we cannot guarantee absolute security. We recommend using strong and unique passwords, not sharing them with anyone, and logging out of your account when using public or shared devices.

Your rights under GDPR

In accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation, you benefit from the following rights regarding your personal data:

• Right of access: you have the right to request and obtain a complete copy of the personal data we hold about you, along with information about how we process it
• Right to rectification: you can request the correction of inaccurate, incomplete, or outdated data in your account
• Right to erasure ("right to be forgotten"): you can request deletion or anonymization of personal account data. Some data may be retained or anonymized rather than deleted where necessary for legal obligations, security, moderation, public research continuity, third-party rights, or the establishment, exercise, or defense of legal claims
• Right to restriction of processing: under certain specific conditions, you can request temporary limitation of how we use your data
• Right to data portability: you have the right to request the transfer of your data to another platform or service, in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format
• Right to object: you can object to the processing of your data for certain specific purposes, especially for activities based on legitimate interest
• Right to withdraw consent: for processing based on consent, you can withdraw it at any time without affecting the lawfulness of processing carried out prior to withdrawal

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at contact@genealogica.ro or via the contact form, clearly specifying the right you wish to exercise and providing sufficient information to verify your identity. We will respond to the request within a maximum of 30 days from receipt, in accordance with GDPR requirements.

You also have the right to file a complaint with the National Supervisory Authority for Personal Data Processing (ANSPDCP) if you consider that your data protection rights have been violated. You can contact ANSPDCP through the official website https://www.dataprotection.ro or by e-mail at anspdcp@dataprotection.ro.

Protection of minors

The services offered by the Genealogica platform are not intended for and do not specifically address persons under the age of 16. We do not knowingly and deliberately collect personal data from minors under this age. If we discover that we have inadvertently collected such data from a minor, we will take immediate steps to delete it from our systems. Parents or legal guardians who discover that a minor in their care has provided personal data without their prior consent are asked to contact us so we can proceed with the immediate deletion of that information.

Changes to privacy principles

We reserve the right to modify or update privacy principles at any time to reflect changes in our data processing practices, legislation, or to improve the clarity of the information presented. Any substantial modification will be published on this page, with a clear indication of the date of the last update. We encourage you to periodically review this page to stay informed about how we protect your data.

Contact us

For any questions, clarifications, or requests regarding privacy principles or how we process your personal data, please contact us at the e-mail address contact@genealogica.ro or via the contact form available on the site. We will respond to your requests as soon as possible.