Privacy Policy — Holden's Archive

Holden's Archive is a family history archive run by one family, not a company. This policy explains, in plain language, what information the site holds about you, why it holds it, and what you can ask us to do with it. ## Who runs this site Holden's Archive. You can reach us about anything on this page at **holden.archive.history@gmail.com**. We do not publish a mailing address. ## What we collect **If you only browse the archive**, you do not need an account and we do not ask you for anything. Our hosting provider records ordinary technical information as part of serving pages to you (for example your network address and the page requested). We also keep a short-lived record of request activity — a network address and a timestamp — purely to notice automated abuse such as a program hammering the search page. Those records are deleted automatically after a day. **If you create an account**, we collect: - your email address and, for email sign-ups, a password (stored only in encrypted form by our sign-in provider, never visible to us); - if you sign in with Google, the basic account details Google returns — your email address and your name; - anything you choose to put in your member profile, such as a display name, a short biography, a profile photograph, and whether your profile is public or private; - any research projects, notes, records, sources, images and documents you create in the research workspace; - support tickets and content reports you send us, including the message itself; - a record of which versions of our policies you have agreed to, and when. We do not ask for, and have no use for, payment details, phone numbers or a postal address. ## Why we collect it We use this information to let you sign in, to show your work back to you, to run the research and submission process, to reply when you contact us, to credit contributions where a contributor has chosen to be visible, to keep the archive accurate, and to protect the site from spam and automated abuse. We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for advertising. ## Cookies and similar technology The site uses a small number of strictly functional items: - **Sign-in session.** When you sign in, your session is kept in your browser's local storage, and a session token is placed in a cookie so files you are allowed to see can be served to you. Signing out clears both. - **A preference for how long you stay signed in**, kept in your browser. There are no advertising cookies and no analytics or tracking cookies on this site. We do not run Google Analytics or any similar visitor-tracking product. ## Services we rely on Running the archive means a few other companies necessarily handle some data on our behalf: - **Supabase** — our database, sign-in service and file storage. Account details, everything you save on the site, and uploaded images and documents are stored there. - **Google** — only if you choose "Continue with Google" to sign in. Google tells us your email address and name; we do not receive your Google password. - **Cloudflare** — we use Cloudflare's Turnstile "are you human" check on the sign-in and contact forms, and when a visitor makes an unusual number of requests. Cloudflare processes technical signals from your browser to tell people apart from bots. It is not used to track you around the web. - **OpenStreetMap** — our maps use OpenStreetMap map tiles, and place searches are matched against OpenStreetMap's public place directory. Your browser contacts OpenStreetMap directly when you view a map. - **Google Fonts** — the site's typefaces are loaded from Google's font service, which means your browser contacts Google when a page loads. - **Vercel** — our web host, which serves the pages to you. Emails from the site — such as address confirmation and password resets — are sent by our sign-in provider. We do not use a separate marketing or newsletter service, and we do not send marketing email. Beyond these, we do not share personal information with anyone. We would only ever disclose information if the law required it, or to protect the archive or its members from harm. ## Public and private information The archive is a public historical record, so material published in it is visible to anyone. Your account email address is never published. Your member profile is private unless you choose to make it public, and you choose whether you are shown as a contributor. Research projects and notes in your workspace are private to you and the administrators until you submit them and an administrator accepts them into the public archive. Historical records in the archive describe people, many of them long deceased. If a record contains information about you or a living relative and you would like it changed or removed, write to us at the address above and we will look at it. ## How long we keep things We keep your account and the material you have saved for as long as your account exists. Accepted contributions stay part of the archive's historical record after that, because removing them would break the record they belong to. Support tickets and content reports are kept as long as they are useful for handling the matter and keeping a record of decisions. Short-term abuse-prevention logs are deleted automatically after a day. We do not have a fixed schedule beyond that; we keep things only as long as they serve the archive. ## Your choices and rights You can: - see and change your profile information at any time while signed in; - ask us for a copy of the personal information held about you; - ask us to correct anything that is wrong; - delete your account from your profile page, or ask us to delete it for you. Write to **holden.archive.history@gmail.com** for any of these. We will act on requests as soon as we reasonably can. Deleting your account removes your profile, your private workspace and your unsubmitted work; material already accepted into the public archive remains part of the historical record. ## Children This site is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us personal information, write to us and we will delete it. ## Security Sign-in, storage and the database are provided by Supabase, and passwords are stored only in encrypted form. Access to private material is enforced at the database level. No site can promise perfect security, but we keep private material private and only collect what the archive actually needs. ## Changes to this policy This policy is versioned on the site. When we publish a new version, the previous one stays in the archive's policy history so you can see exactly what changed and when, and everyone with an account is notified. If a change is significant enough to need your agreement again, you will be asked to accept it the next time you sign in. ## Contact Questions, requests and complaints about privacy: **holden.archive.history@gmail.com**. This policy and the running of Holden's Archive are governed by the laws of the State of South Carolina, United States.