Privacy Policy

Last updated: 24 October 2026

This policy explains how Chinese Genealogy ("the site") handles personal information. The site handles two kinds: information about you as a user, and information about the people recorded in genealogies.

1. What we collect about you

When you register: your email address, display name, password, interface language, when you registered and last signed in, and whether your email address is confirmed. The password is kept only as a one-way hash; the site cannot know the password itself.
A record of what is done: the changes you submit or review (the content before and after, the reason and the time), and a record of actions such as registering, creating a genealogy, changing settings and entering an access code, with the IP address it came from. These records make up a genealogy's history of changes, let changes be undone, and let abuse be traced.
Limits on attempts: to stop passwords being guessed and mail being sent in bulk, the site counts attempts by IP address, email address and account. The counts keep only a value made with a secret key, never the address itself, and are deleted after a day.
Server logs: the web server records the IP address, time and page of each visit, and deletes them regularly under the server's log rotation. To look into a fault, a system administrator can also switch on the site's own request log for a while: pages only (nothing after a question mark in an address), a file a day, kept at most 7 days and deletable at any time, seen only by the system administrators.
Places of China: when you add or remove a village's surname, add a natural village or an old name, or ask for a village to be renamed or moved, the site records the change and its time, the network it came from (an IPv4 address, or the first 64 bits of an IPv6 address), and the name you chose to give, if any; if you are signed in, your account as well. Only system administrators see these, to check changes and roll them back; they are never shown publicly.
Surnames: when you sign in and edit a surname’s encyclopedia page or its local history in a place, the text, references and edit summary you save are shown publicly, and every version stays in the page’s history, where anyone can view and compare them; the site also records when you saved and your account, to limit how often you can save. Pages do not show who saved a version; only system administrators see that.
Videos: anybody, signed in or not, may give the link of a video for a county, district or county-level city, a township, an administrative village or a natural village. The link, title, category, author, date published, description and what it has to do with the place that you give are shown publicly on that place’s page and on Videos once a system administrator approves it; one turned down is seen by you and the system administrators alone. The site also records when you gave it, the network it came from (an IPv4 address, or the first 64 bits of an IPv6 one), the name you chose to give and, if you are signed in, your account, to review it and to limit how many are given; these are not shown publicly, and only system administrators see them. When you give the link alone, the site’s server asks the video’s website for its title, sending only the video’s link.
Counting visitors: the site counts how many people visit each day. When you open a page, your network address (an IPv4 address, or the first 64 bits of an IPv6 address) and browser type are hashed one-way together with a random key that is replaced every day, and the hash is kept for that day only, so that the same visitor is not counted twice. The next day the hashes are deleted and the key replaced, and only the number of visitors for each day remains. The site does this counting itself, with no third party and no cookie. Also, once the site’s own script in a page has run, it tells the site so, sending nothing else; the site keeps a second count the same way, of browsers that ran the page, which leaves out programs that only fetch pages.
Contact us: the name, email address and message you write on Contact us are emailed to the site's administrator, and the site keeps a copy for its system administrators to read and answer, with when it was sent, from which network address, the language of the page, and the account you were signed in to, if any, to answer it and to limit how many are sent.
Check-ins: the pages of genealogies and of administrative and natural villages take check-ins, whether or not you are logged in. The name, place and message you give, and when, are shown publicly on that page; logged out, you may leave the name out, and are shown as Visitor. The site administrators can set it so that, logged out, only the place, the time and a message of emoji alone are kept, shown as Visitor. The place starts as where your IP address is estimated to be: the site looks it up on its own server in DB-IP's IP address database (IP Geolocation by DB-IP), and does not send your address to DB-IP or to anybody else. The estimate is at most a city; you can change it to another country, and in China to another city. The site also records the network the check-in came from (an IPv4 address, or the first 64 bits of an IPv6 one), to limit how many come from one network, and, if you are logged in, your account; neither is shown publicly, and only the site administrators see the network.
Hiding and deleting check-ins: anybody may press the × beside a check-in. It is hidden for you at once (in your session when logged out, with your account when logged in), and the administrators are asked to hide it for everyone. On a check-in of your own, the × deletes it at once, with nobody asked (known by your account when logged in, by this session when not). The site records the network a request came from, and the account of anybody logged in, for the administrators who decide it: a genealogy's administrators or the site administrators on a genealogy's page, the site administrators on a village's. A hidden check-in is no longer shown, and can be shown again; a deleted one is deleted together with the requests about it.

The site uses no third-party analytics, advertising or tracking. Its pages load nothing from other websites, fonts and scripts included, with one exception, video players: when you scroll to a YouTube or Bilibili video, your browser loads that video’s player from YouTube (www.youtube-nocookie.com) or Bilibili (player.bilibili.com), for you to watch it here (it never starts by itself), and their own privacy policies apply there. Videos on other websites open as links. The maps of the Places of China are drawn on OpenStreetMap’s tiles, which this site’s server fetches, keeps and passes on to your browser: your browser does not contact OpenStreetMap. The links on the map to Baidu Maps, Google Maps and OpenStreetMap, and the links in check-in messages, open those websites in a new window, and their own privacy policies apply there.

2. Cookies and browser storage

The site uses a cookie that remembers that you are signed in, which genealogies you have entered an access code for, the check-ins you have hidden with the × or left while logged out, and the videos you gave while logged out. It lasts at most 14 days. Signing out, or ending your viewing access in a genealogy, clears what it remembers. A second cookie, zpb, holds nothing about you: the page's own script sets it, only so that the site can tell a browser from an automated scraper, and it lasts a year.
The site's pages keep, in your browser's local storage, the people you have looked at recently and the name you sign changes with. These stay in your own browser and are not sent to the site.

3. Personal information in genealogies

Names, generations, family relationships, courtesy and art names, places of residence, biographies and so on are entered by members of the family, who should have good reason to record them.
The people in a genealogy: genealogies record living people, so by default the site does not show the public anyone's name or other details - only their generation, sex and number of children - and people's pages are not open to the public. A genealogy's administrators can choose to show the names and pages of its earlier generations to the public; but the recent generations - people with fewer than four generations recorded below them - are never shown to the public, and a genealogy's administrators cannot change this. Only the genealogy's owner, its administrators, system administrators, approved linked members and visitors who have entered the genealogy's access code can see everything.
The owner can make a whole genealogy private, so that only its owner, administrators and linked members can see it.
PDFs and lineage charts can be downloaded only by those who may edit: the genealogy's owner, its administrators, linked members with edit access, and - where the genealogy lets its access code make changes - visitors who entered it. The files made on the server are deleted after an hour; photographs uploaded for a cover are deleted within two days.
If you are recorded in a genealogy and wish to see, correct or remove what is recorded about you, you can contact that genealogy's administrators, or the site.

4. How information is used and shared

Personal information is used only to provide the site's service: signing in, entering and showing genealogies, reviewing changes, preventing abuse, and sending the mail that is needed (confirming an email address, resetting a password).
The site does not sell personal information or give it to others, except:
- Sending mail: confirmation and password-reset messages, notices about applications to join a genealogy, and messages sent with Contact us are sent through Amazon Web Services' email service, whose servers are in the United States; the recipient's address and the message pass through them.
- Where the law requires: under laws and regulations, or at the lawful request of the authorities.
The site's server is located in Hong Kong.

5. How long it is kept

Account information is kept until the account is deleted. An account whose email address is not confirmed within seven days of registering is deleted automatically.
The record of changes and actions is kept with the genealogy, as its history of changes.
The record of changes to the Places of China is kept with the place data, for rolling changes back.
Every version of a surname page is kept with the page; when an account is deleted its versions stay, no longer linked to it.
A deleted genealogy is permanently deleted after 90 days, together with the files made from it.
Counts of attempts are deleted after a day, and exported files after an hour.
Of the visitor count only the number for each day is kept; the hashes used to count are deleted the next day.
A check-in is kept, with its network, until an administrator or whoever left it deletes it; a hidden one too. The requests to hide it are deleted with it.
A message sent with Contact us is kept, with its network, until a system administrator deletes it.
A video given is kept, with its network, until whoever gave it withdraws it or its place is deleted; when an account is deleted its videos stay, no longer linked to it.

6. Your rights

See your account information and the changes you have submitted under "My account", and change your password;
correct what you have entered (subject to the genealogy administrators' review);
delete genealogies you own;
ask to see, copy or delete your account and other personal information, or withdraw your consent: ask through Contact us, and we will act once we have confirmed who you are.

7. Children

A person under fourteen should register only with the consent of a parent or other guardian. Children recorded in a genealogy belong to the recent generations, and their names are not shown to the public.

8. Security

Passwords are kept as one-way hashes; pages travel over an encrypted connection; sign-in, access codes and registration are limited in how often they may be tried; genealogy files are kept apart from the site's program, outside anything the web server serves directly.

9. Changes to this policy, and contact

Any change to this policy will be published on this page with a new date. For any question, write to us through Contact us.