The short version
- We collect what we need to make and deliver your book: your email, name and country, the surname you want researched, and whatever family details or material you choose to give us.
- Your card details go to Stripe, never to us.
- We use advertising and analytics tools (Meta, Microsoft Clarity, Klaviyo). We do not sell your information for money, and we never use your surname or ancestry for advertising.
- The surname and family details you give us are processed by the software, including AI services, that helps us write and illustrate your book. Your payment details are not.
- You can ask what we hold, get a copy, correct it or delete it: write to [email protected] with “Privacy request” in the subject.
- Specific sections cover United States, Canadian and Australian law, and customers anywhere else.
1. Who we are
Who you are dealing with
- Lineage & Heritage — books about family names, since 2024.
- Operated by a registered company in the United States. Our legal name, registration details and postal address are given by email to anyone who asks for them in connection with an order or a claim.
- Email: [email protected]. A person reads every message and replies within 2 business days.
In these documents, “Lineage & Heritage”, “we”, “us” and “our” mean that company. We operate online only. There is no shop and no telephone line: email is how we serve customers, and it leaves both of us with a written record. Please do not send parcels or returns by post without writing to us first.
We decide how the personal information described here is used. The person responsible for our privacy practices — our privacy officer — can be reached at [email protected] with Privacy request in the subject.
2. What we collect
Information you give us
- Email address — to deliver your book and contact you about your order.
- Name and country — taken at checkout.
- The surname to research, and any spelling, region or family origin you tell us.
- Family details and material, if you choose to send them — names of relatives, stories, letters, photographs, documents, dedications.
- For printed copies — recipients’ names, shipping addresses and a telephone number, which carriers require.
- What you write to us by email.
Payment information
Payments are processed by Stripe (including Apple Pay, Google Pay and Amazon Pay through Stripe). Your card number never reaches us. Stripe tells us that a payment succeeded, the amount, and the billing name, country and postal code.
Information collected automatically
- Our own analytics: page views, the campaign you arrived from and purchase events, tied to a random identifier in a cookie. We do not record your IP address in it.
- Server and security logs kept by our hosting and network providers, which include IP addresses.
- Microsoft Clarity session recordings and heatmaps; Clarity masks what you type into form fields.
- Advertising measurement through the Meta pixel and Meta’s Conversions API (section 6).
- Attribution data recorded by WooCommerce and our checkout software about the site or ad that brought you.
- Browser storage that remembers the surname and email you entered, so that you can return to your report.
The Cookie Policy lists every cookie and similar technology.
What we do not collect
No DNA or genetic material, no government identification numbers, no financial account numbers and no health information.
3. Your surname and your family information
A surname combined with a family origin can suggest something about a person’s ethnic or national origin, which some laws treat as sensitive. We use it only to make your book, to find your order and to answer you. We never use it, or anything about your ancestry, for advertising, and we never send it to advertising platforms.
Family material you send us is used only to make and deliver your book and its copies, is seen only by us and the providers who help produce or print it, and is never published elsewhere. Tell us when you no longer want us to keep it and we will delete it; otherwise we keep it for twelve months after delivery so that we can make corrections and reprints.
4. Why we use your information
- To make, deliver, correct and print your book.
- To take payment, prevent fraud and keep sales records.
- To answer you and handle guarantee claims.
- To send marketing email if you asked for it or bought from us (section 8).
- To measure and improve our advertising and our site (sections 6 and 7).
- To meet legal and tax obligations.
Automation. Our production software helps write and illustrate books. It does not make decisions about you: it has no effect on your credit, employment, insurance or legal rights.
5. Who receives your information
We do not sell your personal information for money and we do not rent or trade our customer list. These providers receive only what they need:
- Stripe — payments and fraud prevention.
- Klaviyo — order, delivery and marketing email: email address, name, what you ordered, and whether emails are opened.
- Meta Platforms — advertising measurement (section 6).
- Microsoft — Clarity analytics.
- Cloudflare — content delivery, DNS and security.
- OVHcloud — the servers that host this site, your order and your book.
- Google — Workspace, which hosts the mailbox we answer you from.
- AI and production software providers — the services that help us write and illustrate books (including Anthropic, and an image-generation service built on OpenAI models) receive the surname, the research material and the family details needed for your book. They never receive your payment details.
- Lulu Press and the carriers it uses — only for printed copies: recipients’ names, addresses and telephone number, and the book files.
We may also disclose information where the law requires it, to protect our rights or prevent fraud, or as part of a sale of the business, in which case this policy continues to apply to it.
6. What we share with Meta, and why
When you buy, and at some steps before that, we send event information to Meta so we can measure which advertising works — from your browser (the Meta pixel) and from our server (the Conversions API). With a purchase we send your email address, first and last name and country, each hashed (turned into a fingerprint that Meta uses for matching — this is not anonymization); your IP address and browser user agent, which Meta requires unhashed; Meta’s cookie identifiers; and the order value. We never send the surname you asked us to research or any family information.
Some U.S. state laws call this “sharing” or “targeted advertising”. Your Privacy Choices explains how to opt out.
7. Cookies
We use cookies and similar technologies to run the store, understand how the site is used and measure advertising. We do not show a cookie banner: these technologies load when you arrive, and you control them through your browser and the options in the Cookie Policy, which lists each one.
8. Marketing email
We email customers and people who request a free report or sign up on this site. Every marketing email identifies us, includes our mailing address and has an unsubscribe link that works at once; you can also write to [email protected]. Order and delivery emails continue, because they are part of your order.
The newsletter box at checkout is ticked in advance. You can untick it before you pay. We do not treat that box as consent where the law requires active consent:
- Canada (Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation): we email Canadian customers on the basis of implied consent from a purchase, for up to two years after it, or from an inquiry, for up to six months; after that only if you have opted in. Unsubscribes are processed within 10 business days.
- Australia (Spam Act 2003): we email Australians only with consent — given by signing up, or inferred from a purchase — and process unsubscribes within 5 business days.
9. How long we keep information
- Orders and payment records — as long as tax and accounting law requires (at least seven years), then deleted or de-identified.
- Your book — at its private link while we offer access to it; we delete it on request, so keep your own copy of the PDF.
- Family material you send us — twelve months after delivery, or less if you ask.
- Marketing data — until you unsubscribe; afterwards we keep only your email address on a suppression list so that we never email you by mistake.
- Support emails — while they may be needed for your order or a dispute.
- Analytics and advertising data — under the retention periods of those providers and the cookie lifetimes in the Cookie Policy.
10. Your rights, wherever you live
You can ask us to tell you what we hold about you and where it came from, to send you a copy, to correct it, to delete it, to stop marketing email, and to opt you out of advertising measurement as far as we control it. We do not charge, we do not treat you worse for asking, and you do not need an account.
How to ask. Write to [email protected] with Privacy request in the subject, from the address you ordered with. If you write from another address, we may ask for details only the buyer would know (order number, date, amount or surname) before sending anything, and we reply to the address on the order. An authorized agent may act for you with your signed permission.
Timing. We answer within 2 business days and complete requests within 45 days (30 days in Canada), with one extension where the law allows, of which we tell you.
Some records we must keep, such as sales records for tax purposes; if we cannot delete something, we tell you what and why.
11. United States
Several states — including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Texas, Oregon and others — give residents rights to know, access, correct, delete, obtain a copy and opt out of targeted advertising or “sale”/”sharing” of personal information. Some of these laws do not apply to a business of our size; we extend these rights to every U.S. customer anyway, through the process in section 10.
Appeals. If we decline a request, reply with Privacy appeal in the subject. We will review it again and answer in writing within 45 days. If you are still not satisfied, you can contact the attorney general of your state.
We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16. Our site does not yet respond to Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signals; until it does, use Your Privacy Choices and we will apply your opt-out by hand.
12. Canada
Under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and comparable provincial laws, you may access the information we hold about you, learn how it was used and disclosed, have it corrected, and withdraw consent to marketing and advertising measurement, subject to what we need to complete an order and meet legal obligations.
Cross-border processing. We are a U.S. company. Your information is stored and processed in the United States and in the other countries where our providers operate, and while there it is subject to their laws, including lawful access by their authorities.
If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca) or to the privacy commissioner of your province — in Quebec, the Commission d’accès à l’information.
13. Australia
We handle personal information of Australian customers in line with the Australian Privacy Principles under the Privacy Act 1988, whether or not the small-business exemption applies to us.
- Overseas disclosure. Your information is stored and processed outside Australia — mainly in the United States, and in the other countries where the providers in section 5 operate.
- Access and correction through the process in section 10.
- Complaints. Write to our privacy officer at [email protected]; we will respond within 30 days. If you are not satisfied, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au).
- You may deal with us without giving your name where it is practicable — for example when browsing — but we need your email address to deliver a book.
14. Customers anywhere else
We sell to the United States, Canada and Australia. If you live anywhere else — for example in the United Kingdom, New Zealand or a country of the European Union — the rights and the process in section 10 apply to you in the same way, together with any further right your own law gives you. Your information is stored and processed in the United States and in the countries where the providers in section 5 operate.
15. People named in our books
Our books quote public records and reference works, and some name real people — for example individuals recorded in historical newspapers, censuses or encyclopedic sources — always with the source. Naming a person is not a claim that a customer is related to them. If you are named in one of our books, or act for someone who is, and want to raise a concern, write to [email protected] and we will tell you plainly what we can change.
16. Children
Our site and products are for adults; you must be 18 or older to order. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. Books can include a child’s name if a parent or guardian gives it to us for a family book. If you believe a child has given us information, write to [email protected] and we will delete it.
17. Security
The site is served over HTTPS, card data is handled by Stripe and never reaches us, access to orders is limited to the people who run the business and the providers listed above, and your book sits behind a long random link that is not listed anywhere — anyone who has the link can open it, so treat it like a receipt. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your information, we will tell you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.
18. Changes to this policy
When we change this policy we update its version, date and fingerprint. If a change materially affects information we already hold about you, we tell you by email before it takes effect.
19. Contact
[email protected] — subject Privacy request or Privacy appeal.
Lineage & Heritage. Our legal name, registration details and postal address are given by email to anyone who asks for them in connection with an order or a claim.