Legal Bases

This table provides details as to the legal bases Ancestry relies on for the processing of Personal Information (as defined in our Privacy Statement) under EU and UK law.

 

Purpose Legal Bases
1.  To provide our Services to you we process your Personal Information to:
  • Maintain and update your Account;
  • Process your Credit Card/Payment Information when you provide them in order to use our Services or purchase our DNA test (including to ship our DNA tests);
  • Contact you about DNA test results, authentication or other updates in relation to your Account;
  • Share data with third party vendors in order to provide the Services; and
  • Respond to your inquiries to Member Services.
We rely on contractual necessity to process your Personal Information where it is required for us to perform the Service you requested under our Terms and Conditions.
2.  Your Genetic Information is processed to:
  • Extract your DNA from your saliva and convert it into machine-readable biometric data;
  • Deliver ethnicity results and communities;
  • Provide DNA matches from our database to help you and other users learn more about each other, potential family members, as well as your genetic relatives; and
  • Provide information about any genetic markers associated with certain biological, physiological, or behavioral traits, such as hair thickness and eye color or traits associated with your wellness.

We rely on your explicit consent to process your Genetic Information. You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. Please note that your withdrawal of consent to collect and process your Genetic Information will not affect the lawfulness of processing your Personal Information based on your consent before you withdraw your consent.

To withdraw your consent, you may remove information from your account profile or your family trees, delete your DNA test results, or delete your account. You can withdraw your consent to participate in scientific research in your DNA test settings if you agreed to our Informed Consent to Research in your DNA test settings.

3.  Undertake scientific research on Biological Samples to help advance the study of human genetics, genealogy, anthropology and health.

With your explicit consent, research on your Biological Sample may be performed by AncestryDNA, a third-party researcher, or in collaboration between AncestryDNA and a third-party researcher. This will only be performed if you agree to our Informed Consent for Research.

Your consent to participate in this research is entirely voluntary and is not required to use any of our Services. Even if you consent to participate in the research, you may withdraw your consent at any time, but your information will not be removed from research that is in progress or completed.

4.  To personalise the Services for you:

We collect information from you and may use data licensed from third parties in order to personalize the Services and our offers to you.

Legitimate interests.

5.  To understand, maintain, develop, and improve our Services we:

  • Understand your login history so we can assess your interaction with our Services;
  • Process records and similar archival content obtained from third parties to provide and improve the Services (usually from official record sources, including newspapers, as well as birth, death, and marriage records) which may contain Personal Information relating to you. Public and historical records may also contain Personal Information relating to non-Ancestry users. These records are usually made available to Users as part of the Ancestry subscription Services;
  • Process User Provided Content added to our Services;
  • Provide and develop interesting features for our Users;
  • Collect information about how you access our Services, including the website you visited before and after Ancestry’s site;
  • Learn from your social media interactions with us;
  • Analyse and advertise our Services;
  • Conduct aggregate analysis and develop business intelligence that enable us to operate, protect, make informed decisions, and report on the performance of our business;
  • Share Personal Information among our Ancestry group companies for administrative purposes and in order to provide the Services; and
  • Improve features and functionality in our existing DNA-related products, enhancing the customer experience across Services, improving the quality of our laboratory processes and technology, and building new products and services, including Services related to wellness.

Legitimate interests.

6.  Collecting geolocation information from your device.

Consent-device based permissions.

7.  Conducting scientific, statistical, and historical research by

  • Studying aggregated Genetic Information to better understand population and ethnicity-related health, wellness, aging, or physical conditions; and
  • Disclosing user information in an aggregated form as part of the Services or our marketing, or in scientific publications published by us or our research partners.

Legitimate interests.

8.  For security purposes, we monitor and analyse your Personal Information to:

  • Detect and defend against fraudulent, abusive or unlawful activity; and
  • Detect and protect against other criminal or malicious activity.

Depending on the circumstances, we rely on the following legal bases:

  • To comply with legal obligations;
  • To protect vital interests; or
  • Legitimate Interest - we carry out these activities for our and your legitimate interest of keeping our website and Services safe and secure.

Where we rely on legitimate interests to process your Personal Information, you have the right to object to such processing (meaning that you can ask us to stop). You can use your privacy settings to control certain ways in which we process your data. You can also contact us, using the details outlined in our Privacy Statement, to object to other forms of processing.

9.  For promotional and marketing activities we may use your Personal Information to:

  • Ask you to participate in Ancestry programmes, advertisements, or testimonials;
  • Market products and offers from us by email and targeted advertising; and
  • Disclose user information in an aggregated form as part of the Services or our marketing, or in scientific publications published by us or our research partners.

We rely on consent for email marketing and cookie-related marketing as required under applicable law. Depending on the circumstances, we also rely on legitimate interests.