Privacy Policy

1. Overview

BirthChek respects your privacy. This policy explains what personal information we collect, how we use and share it, and the rights you have over it when you use our website and services. By using BirthChek, you agree to the collection and use of information as described here.

2. Information we collect

When you place an order, we collect the identity information you enter (your legal name, date of birth and relationship to the person named on the certificate), your contact details (email and phone number), the shipping address for delivery, the details needed to locate the birth record, and, when the state requires it, a government-issued photo ID, proof of relationship, a signed statement, or the applicant's Social Security number. Payment is processed by our payment processor; we do not receive or store your full card number, only a reference to it together with the card type and last four digits.

When you visit the site, our own systems also receive limited technical information: your IP address (used for security and to stop abuse, and never stored with our visit counts), your general location as our hosting provider reports it (country and state), your browser and device type, the website that sent you, and the pages you visit. We collect this ourselves, without third-party tools — see section 9.

3. How we use it

We use your information to prepare and submit your application to the issuing office, verify your identity and eligibility, keep you informed about your order, ship your certified copy, process payments and refunds, respond to support requests, understand in aggregate how our pages are used, and meet our legal obligations.

If you start an application but do not finish paying, we may send you up to two emails about finishing it, each with a link back to it and a link to unsubscribe. Apart from those reminders about an application you started, we do not use your personal information for marketing or advertising, and we do not sell, rent or trade it.

4. How we share it

We share your information only as needed to complete your order: with the government office (and its official ordering system, where one is used) that issues the record you requested, with our payment processor to collect payment, with the shipping carrier to deliver your certified copy, and with the service providers that host our website, database and files and deliver our email, which process it only on our behalf. We may also disclose information where required by law, subpoena or court order.

We never sell personal information, and we do not let advertising networks, analytics companies or other third parties collect information from our pages: the site runs no third-party advertising, analytics, session-recording or social-media tags, pixels or scripts. The only third-party code that runs in your browser is our payment processor's secure payment form on the payment step and, on some forms, our hosting provider's check that tells people apart from automated abuse.

5. Retention

When you reach the payment step, we save the application you have entered so far on our servers so you can finish it later; sensitive fields such as a Social Security number are never saved with an unfinished application. An application that is not paid is deleted 30 days after your last activity on it.

After your order is completed, refunded or rejected, we keep its data for 90 days, then delete uploaded documents, blank out the identity fields in our systems and clear the stored payment reference — the order number, its status, totals and dates remain for our records. Some information may be kept longer where the law requires it or to prevent fraud.

6. Data security

Every identity field you submit is encrypted before storage, uploaded documents are held in a private, access-controlled store and served only through short-lived signed links, and all traffic between your device and our site is encrypted in transit. Access to order details within our organization is limited to staff who need it to do their job. No method of transmission over the internet is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

7. Your rights

You may ask for a copy, correction or deletion of your information, or opt out of any sale or sharing of it, at Your Privacy Rights. We verify each request by email and answer within 45 days. We do not sell personal information.

8. Your privacy choices

BirthChek does not sell your personal information, does not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and does not use it for targeted advertising. Our website runs no third-party advertising or analytics trackers, so there is nothing to opt out of and no cookie banner to answer: we use only the cookies the site needs to work (section 9).

We honor Global Privacy Control. When your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we treat it as a request to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information; because we neither sell nor share it, nothing more is needed. A browser that sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track is also left out of our visit counts. You can still send a Do Not Sell or Share request, or any other privacy request, at Your Privacy Rights.

9. Cookies and similar technologies

We set only cookies that are strictly necessary to provide the service you ask for. None is used for advertising or analytics, and none is shared with another company. The table below lists each one, what it does and how long it lasts. On the payment step, our payment processor's secure payment form may set its own cookies to process your payment and prevent fraud; they are part of the payment and are not used for advertising.

We count visits ourselves, without cookies: each browser tab gets a random visit number kept in that tab's session storage and deleted when you close it, and our server keeps a one-way code made from your IP address and browser that changes every day, so your IP address is never stored with the counts and visits cannot be linked from one day to the next. The order form keeps your answers in the tab's session storage so a reload does not lose them, and when you arrive through a link that carries campaign parameters, the tab keeps those parameters until you close it, so the order you place can record how you found us. This information stays in our own systems.

10. Children's privacy

Our services are not directed to anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will take steps to delete it.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time; the version and date at the top of the page show when it last changed. Continuing to use our services after an update means you accept the revised policy.

12. Contact

Questions about this policy or our data practices can be sent to support@birthchek.com.