Genealogy Chat

This topic comes up at least once a month.

Basically, if you are concerned about other people getting their hands on what you consider to be information that is personal to you or your family, then don't publish it on the internet. Once you have passed it on, whether it is by allowing someone to see your tree, or by sending them an email with the information, then you have lost control of it.

GR do warn you to beware than anything you put on the site may be accessible to others.

A lot of members follow Tina's approach of sending information via personal email, but even that isn't totally secure, although it does allow you to be selective as to what you disclose..

Downside is that you have to give out your email adress too - I have occasionally received bulk broadcast messages from people I have been in contact with on this basis, and am certain that this can give rise to an increase in spam messages due to many others geting hold of your email address unwittingly.

I also find it a bit odd that some members go to extraordinary lengths to manually change the names of their living persons on GR to sometrhing unrecognisable. Why not just leave them off in the first place?

Over the years this problem arises again and again, and it is at the least very irritating, and at the worst deeply distressing when it happens. Once someone has your details, or those of living family members, you can get Genes to remove them from the other person's GR tree, but if they have put the information into the public domain on other sites, there is little you can do.

Nowadays, I keep my tree off-line (personally I use the Legacy family tree program which can be downloaded for free). All new information I get is added to that, and periodically I upload it to GR by way of a gedcom. It is a very simple process. But before I upload it, I hide the names of all living people, and also some of those who have recently died and whose children might be distressed to find their parents' names on-line. Hiding these names is easy to do in Legacy. Then, once I have established a match with someone on GR (and only when I am reasonably confident of a match), I offer them a report from my off-line tree, which is easy to produce and again, I hide names of all living people. It does mean that we have to swop email addresses, as you cannot send attachments via GR, but I feel this is a small price to pay and an email address is a fairly anonymous thing anyway. If they do not want to swop information in this way, I take the view that they can't be very serious about their research.

One big advantage of doing it this way, is that I can restrict the information I send them to only that which is relevant to the part of the family they are linked to. Stops the "name collectors" who want to swipe the whole tree regardless of whether they are connected to it or not, and broadcast it heaven knows where. And no-one ever ever gets information about living people. I take the view that to give that away would be a breach of the persons privacy and it is not my place to do it.

Tina

YES, I have been caught out as well. I have most of my tree on 2 other peoples trees, including my grandchildren. They are not even related in anyway except we have a name in common. To prove them wrong I sent for the marriage cert and emailed them a copy, but they still have my entire family on their tree. What a pointless thing to do, They were proud of the fact they had done their entire tree on line, without certs or parish records, well to be exact mostly MY TREE.

So beware of letting anyone have access to your tree

This is a difficult one -the knowledge I've obtained from sharing other people's trees, and the information I've been able to give others is for me the heart of the whole tree-making thing.

But it is infuriating when such mistakes are made - I haven't as far as I know had anything wrong taken from mine, but there was an infuriating incident when someone got in touch with me through hot matches - it was a true match and she gave me access to her tree. In it I found a snarl-up about my ex brother-in-law. The date of his second marriage was given as about forty years earlier, making it look as if he had been already married while engaged to my sister. I p.m.'d this treeowner and explained, asking her to change it . I had no reply, I checked the tree later and there was no change, and a later check indicated she had removed access to her tree.
I never told my sister!

I really carnt see what anyone gets out from doing that , when I have been given access to anyone's tree I ask if its ok to take the line forward from the link to them and that all I take ;;
If I take any married names I will only add to them if I find it jumps out at me on ancestry but cannot see the point of doing that side of tree as not family to me at all

Babs

Sounds like another name collector !!!

Always make sure there is a definite link before you open you tree to anybody.

Hi
That's awful I will bear that in mind!!
Love Norma

Please be very carefull when passing your information onto people, if this information is miss used can contaminate your tree which I have found to my cost.
All my hard work of 9 years has been added to someone else tree and all the information is incorrect.
You then have no way of having their tree taken off the sites they have placed them.