Privacy On The Internet

There is NO good reason to post personal information on the Internet about living people, other than yourself.

I am constantly amazed at the detailed information people post in family trees about relatives, who usually don't even know it is posted. In my own experience, I have had altercations regarding the private details posted about my family.

ONE TIME, when I first got online, I mailed our genealogy (USPS) to a Family Society. It is a long-established organization and I didn't think anything about it. Seven or eight years ago, they did not have a website and one could not have imagined that they would eventually put every scrap of information online. - But they did.

My sister had a month-long brush with genealogy in 1997, at which time she sent out our genealogy files with abandon! But, again, at that time, one could not have forseen the countless serious issues, such as identity theft, that have proliferated on the Internet.

YES, vital records are a matter of public record. But that does not mean they should be posted on the Internet! These records, related to living people, should remain at the COURTHOUSE! Some states, as well as the District of Columbia, do not issue birth information to outside parties until 100 years have passed; for deaths, it is fifty years. Otherwise, ONLY immediate family or legal representatives may obtain the information. - This is as it should be!

Divorces, adoptions and other court actions ARE in the public domain in SOME states... but in others they are CLOSED and require a COURT ORDER to access. So why should some distant cousin have the right to post information that is really no one's business? Again, PERSONAL RECORDS should remain in the COURTHOUSE and not be posted online for immediate public consumption by the curious and the criminal.

One of the first forums for posting genealogy information was Rootsweb.com's WorldConnect. Of course, Rootsweb is owned by Ancestry.com, a lucrative BUSINESS that sells genealogy resources and information. They CLAIM to PROTECT PRIVACY.

After finding a particulary disturbing file at WorldConnect that contained erroneous information about my immediate family, I tried to write to the person who submitted the genealogy file. I received no reply so I wrote to Rootsweb/Ancestry. I was told that they do NOT edit or remove files -- EVER. They claim they have NO responsibily or obligation to remove ANYTHING. Rather, I had the responsiblity to track down the file submitter and deal with it. NEVER MIND if the submitter had died or no longer had the posted email address. According to Rootsweb.com/Ancestry.com, it was "NOT" their problem...

Additionally, Rootsweb/Ancestry HELPdesk person, (name provided upon request), stated that people often disagree on genealogical information. When I stated that MY immediate family was the subject of my concern and I KNOW who was married to whom and who was divorced, I was told that they do not have the time and/or the staff to deal with people's conflicts regarding genealogy information; it is not possible for them to sort out who is right and who is wrong. - Each message from the alleged HELPdesk person was more condescending and belittling than the last. It was hopeless.

And the subscription site, Ancestry.com, owner of Rootsweb.com (all under the umbrella of THE GENERATIONS NETWORK) is ONLY interested in how much money they can make from our personal information and genealogies. On the one hand they claim to protect the privacy of children but they post the names, addresses, phone numbers and sometimes ages of members in a family in their PUBLIC RECORDS index, which gives NO specific source for the data. They simply say it came from "public records." It is hard to imagine what PUBLIC RECORDS would contain this much information about a family! I would like to know ONE example......

There is a REASON why the FEDERAL CENSUS records are not released for SEVENTY YEARS! It is about PRIVACY! - So on my sites, I abide by the SEVENTY-YEAR RULE.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE think before you "share" your genealogy file! Sharing information about long-dead ancestors is one thing but consider the LIVING, especially children, before posting information about them.

Ancestry Cached My Files!

NONE OF THIS IS ABOUT WHAT IS LEGAL;

IT IS ABOUT WHAT IS RIGHT!

This past week (Aug 2007), Ancestry.com (THE GENERATIONS NETWORK) announced a new database, called the "INTERNET BIOGRAPHICAL COLLECTION." That means they were harvesting (STEALING COPYING & KEEPING) files from the internet and saving them as cached files. If I dropped dead, they would have my files to sell. Even I didn't drop dead and decided, instead, to remove one of my files, it wouldn't do any good because the file would still be in Ancestry.com's cache. [And it should be noted that the name of the collection is a misnomer: most or all files were taken and not simply those containing biographies.]

"We cached individual Web pages in an effort to preserve history - if a Web page featuring important family history information were taken down in the future, a cached version would still be available."

- Anna Fechter, The Generations Network

Now, where I come from, we call that STEALING (That's like claiming they broke into my house and "took" my diamonds so they wouldn't be stolen!). However, after the threatening comments I have received from nameless goons, I am curtailing the use of the word STEALING because it is actually a LEGAL term. Instead, I will say that Ancestry.com COPIED MY files and POSTED them on their site. They claim to have shelved the collection "for the time being" but I STILL find my GenWeb files there, albeit in another collection. - So, as far as I am concerned, they are still using my files on the Ancestry.com site.

But here is a GREAT EXAMPLE (one of MANY I could give) of how Ancestry.com offers our FREE work to LURE people to pay for an Ancestry.com subscription. Sure, Ancestry.com seems like the most generous company in the world, as they offer OUR hard work as the BAIT! YES, they own Rootsweb now but I never signed off to give them my files. In these cemetery files alone they are offering about 500 cemeteries from my sites, including thousands of photos.

THE BAIT

Access Genealogy - A Free Genealogy Resource

I WILL PRESENT MY OWN FILES!

THERE IS ONLY ONE INTERNET AND MY FILES ARE ALREADY THERE!

I maintain that ANCESTRY.COM (The Generations Network) does NOT have a right to determine the fate of files that belong to other people. Copyright issues are a matter of law and the files on the Internet can be fought about in court on a file by file basis.

ETHICS on the Internet is every bit as important as LEGALITIES. I would not take a paper clip that didn't belong to me... and it is maddening that someone would TAKE something from me. - No person with integrity and values would copy and post things that someone else spent time, money and effort on, often for many years. - This is about RESPECT and COMMON DECENCY.

The motto of my work is "A SERVICE, NOT A BUSINESS." In contrast, the motto of Ancestry.com/THE GENERATIONS NETWORK is all about exploiting the poor and unsuspecting, including MINOR children, in order to make a profit.

YES. If you come across the names, addresses and telephone numbers of your minor children or grandchildren on Ancestry.com, don't expect them to remove them from their "public documents" because they will NOT... under any circumstances. They do not reveal which "public document" they got the info from but it has to be from a business, like an insurance company.

I am nearly sixty years old and I have a life to live. To waste my time and energy being outraged takes me away from the priorities in my life. IT IS SIMPLY NOT WORTH IT! - And if I were to change the URLs of my sites, it would be a terrible inconvenience to too many people.

Since I am an idealist, I believe that in the end, PEOPLE ARE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR MISDEEDS. I hope that will hold true for the crew at THE GENERATIONS NETWORK, whom I consider completely unscrupulous!

I have received hundreds of emails but this is a good one: "If the internet were an ocean, Ancestry would be JAWS, gobbling up everything in its path..."

I CANCELED my subscription to Ancestry.com and promptly signed up with FOOTNOTE, a partnership of the LATTER DAY SAINTS CHURCH, the NATIONAL ARCHIVES and the ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY. I will take my chances with them!

TIME TO MOVE ON! -- I only hope the public will SPEAK in any way they can to STOP all unethical - and illegal - conduct on the Internet.