Privacy and consent

Who is responsible

The site is run by Tiguri GmbH, Riesbachstrasse 61, 8008 Zürich, Switzerland (company number CHE-297.148.185), in association with the Van der Walt-Familiebond. Tiguri GmbH is responsible for your data (the “controller”). For any privacy question or request, write to [email protected]. You will get an answer from a person.

Where you are in the world

This is a global family, so we apply the strictest standard we are subject to, the European GDPR, to everyone, wherever you live. We also follow the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection, the UK GDPR and South Africa’s POPIA. The same strong protection applies to a van der Walt in Pretoria, London, Zürich or Perth.

What we collect when you join

When you choose to take your place, and only then, we keep what you give us:

• Your name, and the name you are known by, to place you and address you properly.
• Your birth year and a parent’s first name, to find your branch.
• If you belong by marriage, your spouse’s name, to place you beside them.
• Your email address, to confirm your place and to let you sign in.
• Anything else you choose to add: a motto, your story, memories of relatives, how you could help. All of it is optional.

What we keep while you use the site

• Your answers when we ask you something to confirm your place.
• Relatives you add to your line. See “People who have not joined” below.
• Vouches you give or receive.
• Messages you send us through the site.
• If you put a business forward for the Guild: the business details, contact details and picture you give us, and the family you name as having used it.
• For security only: a scrambled, one-way form of your network address, and a record of sign-in links. This stops abuse. We do not build a profile of you.

When you buy something

Some things are for sale on the site, such as the Founding Edition pin. Tiguri GmbH sells them. When you order, we keep:

• Your name, email address, delivery address and cell number, to deliver your order and reach you about it.
• What you ordered, the price, whether and when you paid, and when you agreed to the terms of sale.

Waiting lists: if you put your name down for something that is not ready yet, such as Ernst van der Walt's e-book, we keep your name, email address and what you asked to hear about. We use them only to let you know when it is ready, and you can ask us to take you off at any time.

You pay by card on a page run by Stripe. Your card details go to Stripe, never to us, and we never see or keep them. Stripe tells us only that you paid.

People who have not joined

The One Tree also holds people who have never visited this site. Their details come from the family register compiled by C.M. van der Walt and used with the Familiebond’s permission, from other family genealogy records, and from relatives who add family members.

We keep these records because a family history is worth keeping, and we protect living people strictly. The public tree shows a name only if that person has died, was born more than 100 years ago, or has joined and agreed and is 18 or older. Everyone else is shown only as “living”, with no name.

If you think you are on the tree, you can ask us what we hold about you, have it corrected, or have it removed. Write to [email protected].

If you add a living relative, please only do so if you believe they would be happy about it. Their name stays hidden until they join themselves.

Approximate location, for the map

To show where the family lives, we record your town or city and country when you join. Our host Cloudflare estimates it from your network address. If you type a town yourself, we look up its position with Open-Meteo, which receives only the town name. The map only ever shows wider areas, never you by name. You can correct or remove your location on your own page.

Email, and how we ask

• Emails you need: confirming your place, sign-in links, and replies to things you started, such as a vouch.
• Occasional notes about your place or the site, for example when you have been placed or a new feature affects you. These are rare, and you can ask us to stop them.
• The weekly chapter of Of the Forest and family news, only if you tick a separate box and then confirm by email. Every one has a one-click unsubscribe.

We keep a dated record of when and how you agreed.

Cookies and tracking

We use two necessary cookies: one keeps you signed in, one remembers your language. Your browser also stores your language choice. We use no advertising and no tracking. Our fonts and code libraries are served from our own site, so visiting does not tell Google or anyone else about you.

Three services from outside our site. The join form uses Cloudflare Turnstile to check you are not a robot. The map loads its background images from OpenStreetMap, which sees your network address as any website would. And we count visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics, so we know which pages help and which do not: it sets no cookies, builds no profile of you, does not follow you to other sites, and shows us only totals.

Why we are allowed to hold it

• Your consent, for everything you give us when you join and for the weekly email. You can withdraw it at any time, as easily as you gave it.
• Our legitimate interest, for keeping the site safe, for the family records of people who have not joined, and for occasional notes about your place. We have weighed these against your privacy, which is why living people stay hidden.
• Our agreement with you, when you buy something: we need your details to deliver it.
• The law, where we must keep a record, for example of your consent or of a sale.

Who can see it, and who helps us

• We do not sell your data, use it for advertising, or share it outside the family work.
• The public sees the tree: names only as described above, never email addresses or stories.
• A business put forward for the Guild is seen first only by keepers, who check it. Once the Guild opens, confirmed members see it, and its contact details are shown one member at a time. It is never public. You can change or withdraw it at any time.
• Other members see only what you switch on.
• If you share your invite link to be vouched for, whoever opens it sees your name and birth year, so they can say whether they know you.
• If you make your wapen verifiable, anyone with your private link sees your name, member number, generation and line, and that the family has confirmed your place. You can switch it off at any time.
• Keepers are family volunteers who check claims and look after branches. They see only what they need for that, they must keep it confidential, and what they do is logged.
• Cloudflare hosts the site and database, runs the robot check and counts visits. Resend sends all our email, from its European region in Ireland. Both act only on our instructions.
• When you buy something: Stripe handles the payment. Stripe also keeps payment records under its own legal duties, such as fraud prevention and financial rules, and its own privacy notice covers that. The courier (The Courier Guy and its Pudo lockers in South Africa) and the family volunteer who packs the order receive your name, delivery address and cell number. For a delivery outside South Africa, the maker of the item receives the same, so it can ship to you directly.
• We keep an encrypted weekly backup of the database outside Cloudflare, on Tiguri’s own cloud storage (Microsoft OneDrive). It is locked with a key only Tiguri holds, so the storage provider cannot read it.

Where it is kept

Our database is held in the European Union. Cloudflare, Resend and Stripe are US companies, so some access from outside Europe is possible, for example for support. Where that happens, it is covered by the standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission and recognised in Switzerland.

How long we keep it

• Your place and what you shared: while you remain part of the family record, or until you ask us to remove it.
• A Guild listing: until you withdraw it, or until we remove it. When you withdraw it, it is deleted. We keep only the record that you agreed and withdrew.
• A claim we cannot confirm: we review these at least once a year and remove any that cannot be placed and where the person no longer answers.
• Your weekly email subscription: until you unsubscribe. We keep the record of your consent as proof for as long as the law needs.
• An order: your delivery address and cell number until the order has arrived and any problem is sorted out, and no longer than 12 months after it was sent. The rest of the order record, such as your name, what you bought and what you paid, for 10 years, because Swiss accounting law requires it. If you ask us to delete your data, this record is the one thing we must keep.

Children

You must be 18 or older to join yourself. A parent or guardian can add a younger child, and the child’s name stays off the public tree until they are 18 and claim their own place. Ask us at any time to remove a child’s details and we will.

Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask us to show you what we hold, correct it, delete it, limit or object to its use, or send you a copy. Write to [email protected] and we will answer within one month.

If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the data protection authority where you live: in Switzerland the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner, in South Africa the Information Regulator, in the UK the ICO, or in the EU your national authority. We would rather hear from you first.

How we keep it safe

• There are no passwords to steal. You sign in with a one-time link sent to your email, and we can switch off a session at any time.
• A new member can take their place at once, but can see or contact other members only once relatives or a keeper have confirmed them.
• The keepers’ tools sit behind a separate sign-in, and every keeper action is logged.
• The site works only over secure connections, runs no trackers, and cannot be shown inside other websites. Visits are counted only as anonymous totals.
• The database can be rewound for 30 days, and the encrypted weekly backup is tested so that it can be restored.

If something goes wrong

If your data is ever exposed, we will tell you and the right authority as quickly as the law requires, say plainly what happened, and say what we are doing about it.

Changes

If we change this notice we will update the version and date above. If a change matters to you, we will tell you.