|
|
|
The information below not only applies to those placing their
genealogy at RootsWeb/Ancestry.com but to anyone concerned about privacy matters and
Genealogy on-line. USING ROOTSWEB: Private Concerns
Question. What can I do if I find private information about myself and my living family
members published at RootsWeb?
Answer. That depends upon the nature of the "private" information and where you
have found it. Most information about living individuals is not considered
"private" and it is widely accessible. Names, dates, and places are public, not
private, information.
GEDCOMs (GEnealogical Data COMmunications) submitted to WorldConnect
http://wc.rootsweb.com/ are automatically "cleaned" for entries that involve
individuals born prior to 1930 -- if there is no information listed in the death field.
The submitter of the GEDCOM can elect an earlier date for treating individuals as
"living" or can even remove the living individual from a file completely
for public display purposes. The 1930 U.S. census is available to the public. Thus anyone
appearing in it might appear in someone's posted family tree, even though that individual
is only say 76 years young.
If you find information about yourself in a WorldConnect family tree file you can contact
the submitter at the e-mail address provided on any page of the database and politely
request that it be removed from public display. However, unless this information is
actually private (LIVING Smith is NOT private) in nature and/or concerns someone born
after 1930, it can only be removed through the courtesy of the submitter. RootsWeb
does not edit or alter these user-owned and controlled trees.
Note: Some genealogy programs allow users to privatize (exclude) certain individuals or
data when creating the GEDCOM and prior to submitting it to WorldConnect. However, this
approach is not recommended as the data you remove is the very data WorldConnect's filters
need to establish whether an individual is to be treated as living or dead. Also,
removing data from the raw file you submit to WorldConnect prohibits it from preserving
your complete genealogy file to be used by you as a backup should you need to restore lost
data on your own computer. If you don't submit it, you can't retrieve it later.
Q. I'm concerned about identity theft and worry that if information about my family is
found at RootsWeb it could lead to my identity being stolen.
A. "Identify theft" has become a buzz word, but it is a misnomer. Actually in
most instances it refers to credit card theft and most of that happens offline.
A recent survey reported on the Better Business Bureau website indicates
that the vast majority of so-called "identity theft" cases involve
"paper" theft -- not Internet theft. Even the cases that do involve the Internet
are the result of computer viruses, spyware, stolen passwords, and "phishing"
scams and are not due to information found on genealogy websites. Genealogy websites do
not even represent a blip on the radar of this problem.
http://www.bbbonline.org/idtheft/safetyQuiz.asp
Q. Banks and credit card companies use my mother's maiden name for identification
purposes. Won't having that information available at RootsWeb make it possible for someone
to steal my identity? Thieves need more than names to get into your bank account.
However, you should not use easily found information for identifiers or passwords
for your bank, credit card or other financial account information. If you have
previously given your mother's maiden name or your birthdate as an account identifier --
call or visit the bank or other institution where you have the account and change the
identifying password to one that is not publicly available.
Even if you do not post genealogical information on the Internet, your birthdate and
mother's maiden name may be publicly accessible in various places and they should not be
used for identification purposes. Heed the
advice in these articles:
http://www.creditreporting.com/id-theft.html
http://www.aarp.org/bulletin/yourlife/Articles/a2004-01-28-8tips.html
Safeguard all data which is actually *personal* and should be kept private -- such as your
Social Security number, bank account and credit card numbers. Do not include this type of
private information in any of your genealogical records -- on or off the Internet.
Q. The SSDI (Social Security Death Index) at RootsWeb includes the Social Security numbers
of my deceased family members. Won't this put them at risk of having their identities
stolen?
A. On the contrary, the publishing of the Social Security numbers and names of deceased
individuals enables businesses and other interested parties to verify whether or not a
Social Security number is active or whether the account holder is deceased. This actually
serves to prevent identity theft by publicly posting a list of deceased individuals.
Social Security numbers are not re-used.
Ever since we saw the first "cries of alarm" over someone stealing your identity
because you put your real name on one of your e-mails, Richard Pence, a newspaperman and
long-time genealogist, has been challenging the various newsgroups and mailing lists to
provide him with authenticated information showing that genealogical information was the
underlying cause of an identity theft. No one has seriously tried -- except Pence claims
that he did get an e-mail from someone that claimed "that it actually happened to a
neighbor of my cousin." Further questioning revealed that that one statement was the
extent of the sender's knowledge about the fate of the neighbor.
Pence reports, "So, although I have made repeated challenges it is now approaching 20
years and no one has provided a documented case ("documented" meaning verifiable
by police or court records) yet."
[Editor's note: Richard Allen "Dick" Pence is one of the pioneers of computer
genealogy. He was among the first to see the value of personal computers for genealogical
recordkeeping and began organizing his records with one of the earliest of these machines
in 1978.
http://www.pipeline.com/~richardpence/
http://www.pipeline.com/~richardpence/twolongs.htm]
REPRINTS. Permission to reprint articles from RootsWeb Review is granted unless
specifically stated otherwise, provided: (1) the reprint is used for non-commercial,
educational purposes; and (2) the following notice appears at the end of the article:
Previously published in RootsWeb Review: 13 April 2005, Vol. 8, No. 15.
To subscribe to any of the RootsWeb e-zines which are filled with useful
Genealogical information click on the following link: http://newsletters.rootsweb.com/
|
|
|
|