{"id":214,"date":"2017-02-02T22:48:18","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T22:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beta.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/?p=214"},"modified":"2022-03-23T16:44:00","modified_gmt":"2022-03-23T16:44:00","slug":"genealogy-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/genealogy-privacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Privacy for living people at RootsFinder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Genealogy privacy for living people has been a hot topic lately. My family received a text from my brother the other day with news that his local radio station had been talking about a new genealogy website. He warned us that the site had information about living people which would be open to everyone for free unless we \u201copted out.\u201d The information (ostensibly) was derived from public records, but it made my family extremely nervous. \u201cMy paranoia alarms are going off,\u201d my mom said. \u201cCan you log in and opt out for me?\u201d \u201cMe too,\u201d my dad added. \u201cAnd the dog.\u201d While our dog probably does not care about his privacy one way or the other, many people (like my parents!) are very sensitive about having so much information about our family available online\u2026even if it\u2019s for genealogy.<\/p>\n

I want to be very respectful their privacy concerns. This is why at RootsFinder, you will not find information about living people unless you\u2019ve been invited to their tree. If you have been invited to a tree, please be considerate and don\u2019t re-post information about living people to other websites. We don\u2019t rent, sell, or otherwise share information about our users or their data. Even on the support team, we can\u2019t see anything aside from the username and email address on your account. (Here’s our official privacy policy<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Genealogy Privacy at RootsFinder<\/h2>\n

If you haven\u2019t been invited to a tree, when you look for information about a living person you won\u2019t find anything about them, or their family. As far as you\u2019re concerned, it simply doesn\u2019t exist. This is the same for public and private trees. Whether your tree is public or private, no information about living people is visible to people who haven\u2019t been invited. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. It\u2019s just not there. If you\u2019re not logged in and\/or you haven\u2019t been invited you will see a blank screen if anyone in the family is still living.<\/p>\n

In my case, for example, if my siblings want to see the pictures of my parents I\u2019ve added to our tree, they need to make sure I\u2019ve invited them (which I have) and they\u2019ve logged in using the email address I invited them with. Then they can see the cute pictures of mom when she was 5 years old. Otherwise, all they can see is my grandparents and other people who have passed away. This is because my tree is public. I don\u2019t mind if people see my research; actually, I want people to find it and connect with me.<\/p>\n

Private trees vs. Public trees<\/h2>\n
\"Genealogy
You can change your tree privacy settings in the “Global Tree Settings” section of the settings menu<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Not everyone feels the same way about genealogy privacy. Some people prefer to keep even their deceased ancestors\u2019 information private. For this, RootsFinder offers private trees. With private trees, not only are living people hidden from un-invited eyes, but there\u2019s also nothing available about their ancestors unless you receive (and accept) an invitation from the tree owner.<\/p>\n

Public trees: information about deceased people is visible. Living people are hidden.
\nPrivate trees: no information is available without an invitation. Living people and deceased people are hidden.<\/p>\n

Celebrity trees<\/h2>\n

There is one slight exception. From time to time, we may post articles and\/or demo trees using celebrities to demonstrate how the system works using real data, or to highlight something interesting or notable in the news about them or their ancestors. In this case, we only use information from sites such as Wikipedia, etc. which is either considered “common knowledge,” came from factual sources and serves an educational purpose, or has been published by the celebrities (or their agents) themselves.<\/p>\n

Although some people feel there is little or no privacy in the future and public records about living people should be readily available, at RootsFinder we feel it\u2019s important to respect privacy. Call us old fashioned, but we\u2019d rather err on the side of caution and let you decide who can see your information.<\/p>\n

Do you agree? Please let us know in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Genealogy privacy for living people has been a hot topic lately. My family received a text from my brother the other day with news that his local radio station had been talking about a new genealogy website. He warned us that the site had information about living people which would be open to everyone for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":219,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/privacy-settings.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16084,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions\/16084"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rootsfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}