Privacy Policy

Families of the Missing has created this statement to let you know about our firm commitment to your privacy and full compliance of FAMILIES OF THE MISSING Website and Software with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The following Privacy Policy discloses our approach in gathering and processing Personal Data for Families of the Missing website www.familiesofthemissing.org, related websites, services and FAMILIES OF THE MISSING software.

Any data collected through www.familiesofthemissing.org, forum.familiesofthemissing.org or www.familiesofthemissing.org and other subdomains of the domain Families of the Missing.com (collectively the “FAMILIES OF THE MISSING Website”) will be collected by Families of the Missing which is a company formed in Bend, OR.

By using FAMILIES OF THE MISSING Website or Software (hereinafter also referred to as “Families of the Missing”) you explicitly consent to such use of your Personal Data and agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy.

We process data based on:
• consent of the user;
• the necessity of the data for providing the services that users are contracting for when they use FAMILIES OF THE MISSING Website or Software.

Data centers hosting FAMILIES OF THE MISSING Website and Software data, including user data, are located within New York, NY, United States. Accordingly, as an EU resident, in order to access the FAMILIES OF THE MISSING Website or Software your data may be transferred outside of the EU. By using the FAMILIES OF THE MISSING Website, you consent to the cross-border transfer of your data in order to receive access to the FAMILIES OF THE MISSING Website.

If you do not consent to the processing of your data in order to access and use the FAMILIES OF THE MISSING Website or Software, please do not use, or engage with, the FAMILIES OF THE MISSING Website or Software.

What Personal Data we collect

Families of the Missing collects Personal Data (hereinafter also “Data”) in case you choose to register with FAMILIES OF THE MISSING service.

We ask users to provide following Data:

• first and last name – to identify users and display a unique username in FAMILIES OF THE MISSING support Forum (“Forum”) associated with user’s Forum account (“Account”) at forum.familiesofthemissing.org;
• email address – to authenticate users, provide access to support Forum and help them recover lost / forgotten password to access to support Forum;
• information about user’s devices (operation system, mobile devices, PC configuration) – for effective troubleshooting of user’s issues related to FAMILIES OF THE MISSING software.
Aforementioned Data is collected only upon user either enters particular information or uploads it on his own initiative using FAMILIES OF THE MISSING forms and tools.

We also collect following technical data:

• IP address – to help diagnose problems with our server and to administer our website and to identify you and your time spent at our website to understand which parts of our website users are visiting and provide better user experience;
• Location (based on the IP address);
• Operation System and Internet Browser data;
• Hardware specifications (screen size, other specifications);
• Other data. Please refer to “Third-party service providers” section of this Policy and the following link: https://developers.google.com/analytics/resources/concepts/gaConceptsTrackingOverview to learn more.
If you choose not to register or provide Personal Data, you can still use our website anonymously. But you will not be able to access areas that require registration (e.g. you can’t ask questions in support Forum).

Technical data is recorded automatically when you visit our site or use our service and is generally anonymous (does not reveal user’s identity). However, if you are logged into your Account some of this information could be associated with your Account.

We do not link IP addresses to anything personally identifiable. This means, for instance, that a user’s session will be tracked, but the user will remain anonymous. We do not use this information for any other purposes.

We also collect certain categories of personal information about users from other sources. In particular:

• Financial and/or transaction details from our payment provides (located in US, Netherlands, Romania, UK, Ireland, Germany, Japan, Taiwan). This is necessary in order to process a transaction;
• Third-party service providers like Google (located in the US), which provide information about you when you link, connect, or login to your Account with your Google Account and we receive information such as your Google e-mail and profile from that service. This only occurs if you are using Google Account to login. The information varies and is controlled by Google or as authorized by you via your privacy settings in Google Account.

When you interact with social media buttons (i.e. “share”, “like”, “tweet”, “+1” etc) on our website or when you link your Account to or log in through a social media website the social networks may record some of your actions.

How we use Personal Data

We collect and processes Data for the following purposes:

• to provide users with better experience;
• to investigate performance issues, bugs and any other technical issues regarding Resources;
• to make FAMILIES OF THE MISSING better;
• to comply with the law.

Families of the Missing may share non-personal, summary information regarding FAMILIES OF THE MISSING users with partners or other third parties. However, we will not share any individual customer information outside of the contracted partners and third parties without first receiving user’s prior written approval. In short, Families of the Missing does not sell user’s Personal Data.

Families of the Missing may send you tips on using Families of the Missing, notify you of and get your feedback on upcoming releases or new services offered only if you subscribed to our mailing lists. Users are able to unsubscribe from the mailing list any time after receiving the first informational message using link contained within informational message or by using appropriate Account settings option.

How long Data is used

We retain your Data for as long as is necessary to provide the service to you and others, and to comply with our legal obligations. Your Data is stored and processed only when your account is active until you delete or deactivate it.

You are entitled to delete Your own Account. To do so please contact us by sending e-mail at [email protected] using e-mail address, you entered during registration. Upon receiving this request Your Account will be completely deleted in 30 days.

How you can control your Data

You have various rights to control use and processing of your Personal Data and other information. This means that you are entitled to request us to take certain actions at any time and free of charge.

Data portability right. You have the right to request a digital copy of your Data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format to be able to move from one service to another.
This can be achieved by emailing us at [email protected] and we will provide you with an electronic file containing your Data.

Right to rectification. You have the right to obtain the rectification of inaccurate Data. You entitled to have incomplete Personal Data completed. In order to do so, please use appropriate settings to edit and complete your incomplete Personal Data if you find it necessary or provide us with a supplementary statement by sending e-mail at [email protected].

Right to restriction of processing. You also have the right to request that we cease to process or use your Data in any way.
If you choose to do so, your Data will become unavailable for everyone, but it won’t be deleted, so you can restore it at any time. To achieve this goal, please email us at [email protected].

Right to erasure (“Right to be forgotten”). You are eligible to delete certain Data from our site and services. Please contact us by sending e-mail at [email protected] to do so.
Please note, if you choose to delete your Data, it will become unavailable and will be completely deleted in 60 days upon your delete request.

Please, be aware, that sometimes we have to store some Data for a longer period of time either due to technical limitations or to comply with the law.

Underage

Families of the Missing does not intentionally collect Personal Data from persons, who are minors under their applicable local legislation. If you are under 16, you will need consent from your parent(s) or other legal guardian(s) before submitting any Personal Data to Families of the Missing via FAMILIES OF THE MISSING website or software, with the exception if such activities are allowed by applicable law of your country. If we become aware that a person under 16 has provided us with personal information without appropriate aforementioned consent, we will take steps to delete such information.

Links to Other Sites

FAMILIES OF THE MISSING Website may contain links to other sites. Please be aware that Families of the Missing is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such websites as well as any information they might collect, even though our name or logo may appear on those sites. We encourage you to be aware when you leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every website that you visit, as the Privacy Policy of those sites may differ from ours. Our privacy statement applies solely to FAMILIES OF THE MISSING Website and Software.
How we use “Cookies”

During your visit to our website, so-called “cookies” are saved to your computer. These “cookies” are small computer files, necessary to provide functionality and track user’s activity: register information about user’s navigation on our website (e.g. loaded pages, date, time of day and length of visit etc) which we can access during your next visit in order to adapt the website to your personal requirements and optimize loading times. We also use this information to enter your data into inquiry forms so that you do not need to fill them again.

We never store passwords or similarly sensitive data in our website cookies. The use of cookies is common and advantageous. Cookies are used on most websites. By indicating how and when visitors use a website, cookies aid us in finding out which areas are popular and which areas are not. Many improvements and updates are based on information supplied by cookies. Cookies can also help us to personalize web content and meet the demands of our visitors.

Our website does not use cookies to collect Personal Data from your computer that was not initially sent as a cookie.

What cookies do we use and why:

• Essential. These cookies are necessary in order to enable certain base features, such as identifying certain user and remembering that user have logged into his Account. These cookies may store unique user authentication key and are required by the service to operate correctly. Although cookies do not store your password directly, user authentication key is as a password substitute. Please be aware that you shall not let others to copy your cookies.
• Functionality. These cookies are used to remember some choices that users make (i.e. search parameters or language settings) and to make your use of our site and services more tailored.
• Performance and analytics. These cookies collect information on how users operate with our site and services and help us to improve them. We use Google Analytics cookies to identify areas for improvement such as navigation and user experience, and marketing campaigns. Please check the “Third-party service providers” section to learn more.

Users can disable cookies by changing their Internet browser settings. However, if you instruct your Internet browser to not accept essential cookies, FAMILIES OF THE MISSING Website may not work properly or may not work at all.

Data Protection

Your Forum Account is password-protected so that you have secure access to your Forum account and Personal Data stored on your website. It is the user’s responsibility to protect the security of their password. We do not take responsibility for any undesirable information disclosure due to password insecurity.

To minimize any personal data breach, we implemented following different security measures including:
• physical access control;
• randomly-generated brute-force resistant staff passwords;
• strong cipher-encryption for all mediums containing Personal Data (where appropriate);
• end-to-end encryption using modern TLS (Transport Layer Security) cryptographic protocol for all connections containing Personal Data;
• other safety measures to reduce the risk of unauthorized access.

Third-party service providers

We use third-party service providers to provide hosting and analytics.
AWS Amazon file hosting. We use Amazon AWS cloud storage to store user files including Data, which is located in North Virginia, United States.
To learn how Amazon AWS treats your privacy, please see the following link: https://aws.amazon.com/privacy
Google Analytics. We also use Google Analytics to track what is used the most, to understand our users’ needs and to make our site and service better.
Please visit the link to understand Google’s approach to privacy: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en

Privacy Policy Updates

Families of the Missing may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We encourage you to review this privacy statement for any changes occasionally. If any changes are made to the way in which we treat your Personal Data, we will inform you about such changes via email or by posting a note on our website.

Further Questions

If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy, feel free to email us at [email protected].
Data Protection Officer
You can contact Data Protection Officer by emailing [email protected].