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BCG Learning Center

Serious genealogists never stop learning. There are many options for genealogical education; the opportunities listed below are not exhaustive, nor are they compulsory. Each of us starts from a different place. Each of us has to choose what will work best given our different interests, aptitudes, friends, colleagues, budgets, and learning styles. That said, serious genealogists do not confine themselves to the local, the familiar, or the easy. Those who succeed in becoming certified—and growing beyond that point—typically combine a variety of learning opportunities. BCG’s internal statistics show that applicants who engage in ambitious learning opportunities have a higher success rate than those who have not.

The purpose of the BCG Learning Center is to provide serious genealogists with resources for genealogical education. It is up to you to determine which options are appropriate and of value.

Privacy Policy

Board for Certification of Genealogists Privacy Policy

Updated: 6 September 2024

At the Board for Certification of Genealogists (“the website”), we have three fundamental principles that we follow when it comes to your privacy:

• We don’t ask you for personal information unless we truly need it.
• We don’t share your personal information with anyone except in accordance with law.
• To the extent consistent with our essential function as a certifying organization, we give you control over the personal information you provide to us and let you choose how and when it is used, shared, kept or deleted.

Our full Privacy Policy is set out below. Please take the time to read and understand it.

Information we collect for website purposes

The owner of the website (see the signature block below) is the sole owner of the information collected on this site. We only have access to personally-identifying information if you voluntarily give it to us directly or by email. For example, if you provide an email address to  use the contact form. If you purchase products such as an OnBoard subscription, you’re asked to provide a name, email or mailing address, credit card or other financial information. This is always on an opt-in basis: you’ll still be able to read the website content even if you decline to supply personally-identifying information.

Our use of your information

We use the information we collect when you purchase products, make a comment, subscribe to receive blog posts by email, use the contact forms, surf the website, or use certain other site features in the following ways:

• To process your orders or transactions.
• To improve user experience.
• To keep the website secure.
• To improve the website.
• To respond to your requests.

We don’t and won’t sell or rent your information to anyone, and we won’t share any of your information with any third party outside of our organization. (That includes our web hosting company, our eCommerce service HikaShop and payment processor Stripe, and any web developer whose help we might need with a problem on the website. Our spam-blocking service, CleanTalk, gets temporary access to messages and comments to prevent spam.) We will disclose personally-identifying information only if we’re required to do so by law; that hasn’t ever happened to date.

We also collect aggregate data about visitors (browser type, language preference, referring site, date and time of visit and the like), through our hosting service that track this information for us, and retain it in log form. This information isn’t linked to anything personally identifiable, but we don’t sell or rent any of it to anyone either.

Protecting your information

The website is scanned on a regular basis by the web hosting service ScalaHosting using SShield Security Guard for security holes and known vulnerabilities in order to make your visit to our site as safe as possible. The website is backed up in safely encrypted files through Akeeba. Backup files using Akeeba are stored in the location of our choice and are not accessible by Akeeba.

All sensitive/credit information you supply is encrypted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology.

When you initially provide or update payment information, we transmit it via an encrypted connection to our Payment Processor, Stripe, a service of Stripe, Inc., 185 Berry Street, Suite 550, San Francisco, CA 94107. Stripe uses and processes your payment information in accordance with its privacy policy. We don’t store your payment information, other than your zip code and country, which we require for billing and to comply with tax and other government regulations.

Third-party links

This website, through its blog posts and other content, has links to other websites. We’re not responsible for their content or their privacy practices. If you click through to another website, be sure to read its privacy policies before using that other website. We’re also not responsible if any content from this website is republished elsewhere without our permission.

Use of Cookies

A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. The website doesn’t use cookies for tracking purposes, but does use the cookies to:

• Help remember and process items in your shopping cart.
• Understand and save your preferences for future visits.
• Let you share blog posts with social networks like Facebook or Twitter.
• Compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interactions.

You can change your browser settings to warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can turn off all cookies. That may impact some ways the site works for you (you can’t post a comment if you turn off cookies, for example), but you’ll still be able to read the website content.

Associate Directory

Associates may choose to be included in a directory displayed to visitors to the website, and may limit the personal information displayed. At an associate's request, any such information may be corrected or removed from the directory.

Information we collect for certification purposes

As a certifying organization, we collect personally-identifying information when you apply for certification. You may not apply for certification without providing information such as your name, email address, mailing address and the like. This information is retained permanently in the United States and used for certification purposes only.

As with all other personally-identifying information we collect, we don’t and won’t sell or rent your information to anyone, and we won’t share any of your information with any third party outside of our organization. We will disclose personally-identifying information only with your consent or if we’re required to do so by law.

Your rights as to personally-identifying information collected for website purposes

Under the Privacy laws, you have a number of rights with respect to personally-identifying information that's been collected for website purposes, which are:

Consent withdrawal: You’re entitled to withdraw any consent you’ve given in the past to the collection or processing of personally-identifying information for website purposes. You can do so at any time by contacting the Board by mail or email (see below).

Data review: You’re entitled to review personally-identifying information that’s been collected for website purposes. You can ask to see such information by contacting the Board by mail or email (see below).

Data correction: You’re entitled to correct and update personally-identifying information that’s been collected for website purposes. You can ask to have such information corrected or updated by contacting the Board by mail or email (see below).

Data portability: If any personally-identifying information that’s been collected for website purposes is portable, you’re entitled to ask us to transfer it to another data controller.

Data erasure: You’re entitled to have personally-identifying information that’s been collected for website purposes erased. You can ask to have such information by contacting the Board by mail or email (see below).

These rights do not apply in their entirety to persons who have begun or completed the certification process; such information is legally retained for the legitimate purposes of the certifying organization.

Privacy Policy Changes

This Privacy Policy may change from time to time in the website’s sole discretion. You should check this page often for any changes. Your use of the website after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.

For more information

If you need more information or have questions about this privacy policy, please feel free to contact us by mail or email.

— Board for Certification of Genealogists
P.O. Box 14291
Washington, DC 20044

Updated: 6 September 2024