Does Ancestry retain credit card numbers long after the need and have no way to remove?
In early December of after logging into Ancestry.com, I noticed under store Orders they listed the last 4 digits of all my credit cards used in the past in the same format as listed under My account update credit card information. I sent an email on December 23 to requesting that all my credit card information be removed. On Jan. 2 after receiving no response, I forwarded the same email with a request Is this request being processed as requested? Please respond.
On Jan 3 someone at Ancestry.com phoned me. The rep first tried to tell me the info was in cookies on my computer which I knew was not true, He then tried to tell me they only had the last four digits and I also was certain this was not true. He then told me he would have to delete my account and I said OK. At first I could not log in so I thought my account was deleted but it didn't take me long to learn that all he did was add the word broken after my login ID. While learning this I also learned they had the last four digits of the credit cards I used for my last 2 purchases of FTM at Genealogy.com.
On March 21 I again sent an email requesting removal and received this reply along with an offer of a free membership:
In order to protect our customer's financial information, we encrypt all credit card information and do not allow agents to view full credit card numbers. An agent is allowed to view a small portion of a customer's credit card in order to verify the card usage, but not the whole numerical string.
An agent has the capability of changing the default credit or debit card that a customer uses, can update customer information like address, username, email address and password, but does not have the ability to delete a customer's financial information from our records.
We have to keep financial information on file (encrypted and stored on secure severs) for tax reasons, but as I mentioned previously, we do not give that information out, nor can our agents access it.
If you have additional questions or concerns about our business practices, please feel free to contact me.
I replied that their agent that called was not truthful and that there was NO LAW state or federal that required them to keep my credit card numbers. I also stated what I thought of their business practices and that I had all the numbers for credit card numbers in their files changed so what they had was now useless.
You know, I never did get a response to that email or the free subscription.
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