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THE GIBBS SURNAME DNA PROJECT
Privacy Policy

We Respect Your Privacy Rights . . .

The Gibbs Surname DNA Project accepts the responsibility to keep your specific data private, at the same time, making enough general information public to allow us to share what we learn under the terms and conditions that are explained on our Terms and Conditions of Use page, and with the understanding that what we share is to be used for general genealogical purposes only.

We do not collect or compile ANY personal data from those who visit our web site. The Gibbs Surname DNA Project does not rent, sell, or share personal information about you with other people or companies unless you have explicitly asked us to do so. When, and only when we have your permission do we provide contact information about you, and then only under the following circumstances:

The Privacy of Our Project Participants . . .

When someone is tested through our project we refer to him as a participant. If his test does not produce a match to at least one other participant within a few alleles, neither he nor we know as a fact that he has a confirmed relationship to anyone else in the project. There is a possibility that he may not even be a "Gibbs" by any spelling. He could have been adopted. To preserve the privacy and dignity of our participants, we only display their Y-DNA information under a coded identifier and do not indicate who they believe they descend from - - unless they DEMAND that we share their names and earliest known ancestor on the web site. That way each participant remains anonymous to everyone outside the project until he makes a match/near match. While he has no matches within our project he is a new/unique haplotype for our purposes.

When we do find a match, and a participants knows he is part of a confirmed Gibbs haplotype, new avenues of communication and information sharing are available between the participants. Participants decide what information they wish us to put on the site, some of it factual and some of it speculative. The first participant to test as a unique haplotype becomes the Leader and primary Point of Contact (POC) for that haplotype. When matches or near-matches are found, the matched participants become additional Points of Contact, and the POCs remain in charge of any shared information about their haplotype at all times.

Visitors to the project web site (whether they are participants or not) will find a variety of information about our diverse Gibbs lines. The reason there isn't more about the unmatched haplotypes is because those participants have not chosen to become a Point of Contact (POC) and haven't asked us to display their information. When they ask us to put up their information we do so.

We do introduce participants to each other so they can communicate if they wish. So far it seems that the majority wait until they find a match, or at most communicate with someone a couple of alleles away from theirs because they can see that the other haplotypes are not related to them at all. It's very helpful to know who you are NOT related to. All of our participants promise each other that we will not reveal any other participant's information because it is and always remains their individual property, and we are not at liberty to divulge it without express permission. For this reason, we cannot share any information about the other participants. Instead, we encourage non-participants to get in touch with the primary POC or other POCs shown on our Projects Findings page.