Who are trustarc.com?
While waiting for familysearch to display a perfetly normal results page, I noticed in the status bar a momentary reference to trustarc.com. Who are they and what is their relationship to familysearch? I automatically don't trust any organisation with the word trust in their name! Doing a search here I found the only reference to them is this page which explains nothing, it's in the page source but not the displayed page:
community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/461104#Comment_461104?utm_source=community-search&utm_medium=organic-search&utm_term=trustarc
Re: Booklet download
Comment by Julia Szent-Györgyi
Last Updated: Jul 12, 2022
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page), Privacy Policy (main FS legal page), Terms of Service (main FS TOS), and Cookie Preferences ("powered by TrustArc | TRUSTe" popup that I've never seen before). As mentioned, the FS logo at the
Answers
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See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrustArc
which would suggest that FS may be using this product to handle some or all of the privacy legislation that applies in different countries.
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I was hoping someone from familysearch would confirm that, as I wouldn't expect their business name would appear in the way it did. I'm not aware that privacy regulations apply to deceased people in any country and there shouldn't be anyone else's data in familysearch. Trustarc don't seem to have been particularly trustworthy according to Wikipedia and I've not found a published list of their customers.
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I would suggest the point is the privacy of the signed-in user, cookie handling, etc. (i.e. this isn't about the application of GDPR type Data Protection requirements to FS' stored data).
Hopefully someone from FS will respond - @Maile L can you help please?
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@John1 There are MANY records for the living in FamilySearch databases and profiles in the tree itself. And, of course, all of us who use the website are living.
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@John1 That wikipedia article seems to just point out common flaws in a lot of major corporations of not quite delivering what they promised and taking some shortcuts that then get discovered which leads to reprimands, fines, and, one would hope, improved services. In any event, it was pretty easy to find lists of their customers.
This one lists the ten websites with the most traffic that use them: https://www.wappalyzer.com/technologies/cookie-compliance/trustarc/ Interesting to see that redhat.com is the top one. Even more interesting is that the third one on the list is Oracle. I think that if Trustarc is good enough for Oracle of all places, we can be pretty comfortable with FamilySearch using them.
This one claims to list all 1,245,435 companies that use Trustarc: https://trends.builtwith.com/websitelist/Trustarc-Cookie-Consent
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One of my Firefox add-ins is uBlock Origin which shows what other domains are used by a website.
FamilySearch dot org uses 28 domains, one of which is trustarc but there are a raft of users that are used for perfectly legitimate reasons - why would FamilySearch write its own software to do X if it can use (for a suitable fee) someone else's? No, I haven't the faintest idea what other than a handful do - probably nothing until I want to use that functionality. I believe that FS would say that the site won't work properly without them all.
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Interesting that uBlock Origin, for me, shows 24 other domains used by FS.org.
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@Áine Ní Donnghaile - TBH it's one of those things that I'm surprised we're that close! I've no idea how the domains-thing works but I'd take wild guesses that the UK version might mark up different domains for loading than the USA's version. It all sounds a bit "It depends..."
PS - I just noticed I can tag you again with a "@" followed by ordinary letters "ain" - no A-acute. And the wire-frame for this Comment box encloses a white space again. So either they've reverted or they've fixed the odd changes or ...?
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or .... it depends on how you hold your tongue when posting.
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If you click on Cookie Preferences at the bottom of the FS home page (or indeed at the bottom of this very page) and drill into the advanced settings you will find all sorts of interesting stuff including assorted TrustArc information.
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