Genealogy Chat

Thankyou everone for your help and comments...

Reggie Thankyou for your informative post - I must admit that I have sometimes wondered if this is the explanation for some of the meaningless messages I get - the meaningless messenger is trying to establish message contact with me, so that they can then work out who is in my tree! Hard luck - all my living are disguised on my tree and in my lisitngs as LIVING, and even those are only the people that I MUST have in my tree to provide continuity. OC

Hi Folks, I don't EVER open my tree on here. In Family Tree Maker I can produce reports and knock off later generations (the living ones). Even if your tree doesn't have living people on it, people can still see and copy people from your tree (who aren't even related to them). This happens frequently on GR - lord knows why! It may sound more labour intensive to produce reports than open a tree, but I only supply reports to those who have a DEFINITE connection to someone on my tree. I don't supply info to chancers. At the end of the day, the people you supply reports to is quite low. People tend to let chancers look at their trees and this is where people just tack relatives onto their trees willy nilly. Some 'researchers' on here do no research at all and merely harvest all their info from other users. Recent quote from myself to another GR user: 'Thank you for your very interesting information about ******** - that answers a lot of questions! Thanks for our interesting correspondence. So nice to find a member of GR who actually does some research! They just usually cry: 'Lemme see your tree'!!! and give you nothing in return. Thank you for a pleasant and useful mutual exchange of information.' This can be a useful site when you come across good researchers - but take care. Cheers, Horatia

Clive and Jan Thanks ever so much for your replies. I'll give it a go Jeanette x

FTM says: Privatizing your Family File Part of the reward of genealogy is the exchange of information with other hobbyists and professionals, as well as your own family members. While sharing information is the key to expanding your family tree, it also brings up the question of how to protect the privacy of living family members. Maybe your Family File includes some personal information you would rather not share with people outside the family, or perhaps you’d like to omit addresses and phone numbers. Family Tree Maker allows you to assure the privacy of others (as well as your own) by designating certain facts as private. This prevents this information from being imported/exported, printed, copied, or published on the Internet. To use the privatization feature: 1. From the File menu, select Privatize File. Family Tree Maker displays the Privatize File dialog box. 2. Select Yes if you want Family Tree Maker to hide the Birth, Death, Marriage, Medical, and Notes information for living relatives. 3. Family Tree Maker displays a progress meter while it privatizes your Family File. It hides all data fields for living individuals and marks them with the word “private.” Only relationships between living individuals will be retained. Once selected as a preference, privatized text is enforced whenever you copy/export, print, or publish your Family File. Note: When privatized, your file will become 'read-only.' This means you cannot modify the file in any way until you leave this mode. You can deselect the Privatized mode at any time in the original Family File by returning to the Preferences dialog box. Jan

I'm sure it does, but I have not used the program, so I'm not sure how it works. Someone will be able to say: certainly it is very easy indeed in PAF ...

Hi Clive Do you happen to know if FTM has that feature. I am hoping to upload my full tree in the next few days and I'm a novice with this program......well with most programmes actually! Jeanette x

Robert, The Hide Living Relatives option is not what it seems (or should be). If I have access to your tree, and the living relatives in it are hidden, their names and year and place of birth will still appear in the GR index. I can search for them, and if I have been in contact with you before, the search results will link your name with the names matching my search request. If I am looking at your shared tree, and search it for your name, the correct box on the tree that contains your (hidden) name will be immediately highlighted by those nice GR programmers. Worst of all, if you have included dates of birth (which is very frequent with living relatives) the date is not hidden. So if I know the family name, and the date, I can find the hidden name from the GRO births index in 30 seconds, 9 times out of 10. GR's T&C require that you have the express permission of each and every living person to appear in your tree, and there is no meaningful sense in which the data is hidden REGARDLESS of whether the Hide Living Relatives option has been selected. You do not need the tree to be shared to have access to the index, and once I have contacted you, GR will kindly match your name to any relatives I search for. If I sent you a message now - and it needn't actually say anything at all, a blank one will do, I could probably work out who your parents were in less than 15 minutes. I've done it loads of times, and the criminals can do it too. The only answer is to import your tree from your own family history software, and to filter out all details of living individuals. My PAF software has a one-click option to hide everything about a loving soul except the gender (and you can record 'unknown' if you wish). All that will appear is a place marker for a person, connected by BMDs to other place markers. No names, no places, no dates: indeed nothing at all that the search feature can get its hands on.

We do have the option on here to stop living relatives from appearing when someone else views our trees. I think, I hope ! It was added a few months ago I think. I am under the impression that my living family members are not viewable by anyone that does have access to view my tree.

Hayley, Try not to worry about whatever it that's worrying you. IT MAY NEVER HAPPEN....Do you know for sure that some person has copied names from your tree and if so, and they are living people, then ask him to remove the names. If they are long-time-dead then it doesn't matter so much. Sometimes people copy names and then put them onto public trees on Ancestry and this is horrid when it happens to you(unless you are one of those who doesn't mind). So, for the future, be cautious about opening your tree. M

Hayley As soon as you close your tree to someone, they can no longer see anything on your tree. So if you added living people AFTER you closed your tree, then no-one can see that information except you. I do agree with Clive here - why have living people on your tree at all on here? (Your offline tree is different, of course, because that is private). OC

The answer, as always, is not to name living individuals in your tree unless you are happy to break the T&C of the site, and compromise the privacy of members of your own family. If you really DO have the express permission of each and every one of your living relatives, and they don't mind the indiscriminate publication of details about their mother's maiden name, date of birth and all the other information that is meat and drink to the criminals who commit identity fraud offences, then fine ....

Have a look at my thread called Am I famous or not....! on the General board. This arose as a result of a copy from a copy, which shows what can happen in these cases.

Thanks...why I am worried is... I opened my tree ages before I put living reallies on, I dont open my tree.. but I am worried if he has copied any and then opens his up ..if you know what I mean..

Sometimes it happens that as you find and add new people to your tree then a person to whom you have opened your tree adds those same new people, that you have researched, onto the tree they have copied from you. Since you also have access to their tree you can view these new additions as and when they add them. If you do not want people to do this then close your tree to them. It may happen that a person you thought you had reasearched properly turns out not to be your relative after all(It happens sometimes) in which case the person who has copied your tree will have it wrong anyway. You need not open your tree to anyone. Just say no and ask what the connection is and offer them names and dates if yours fits their tree. Do what you feel most comfortable with ... and do not put any living people on your tree. You know who they are and that is all that matters. M

Hayley, You can always shut your tree. Why are you worried? If someone has copied any living relatives from your tree, get on to Genes Reunited and they will ask him or her to remove them. Cheers, Horatia

Yes I do Jess thankyou and I think I am a bit worried now..

Understanding your Q slightly differently... I think you mean if you open your tree to someone this afternoon, (and they have a look)and tonight add another relation, and they looking tommorow , then yes, I believe each time they look, the see the tree that you are building, exactly the same one as you see, just dont have the ability to build on yours, if you understand all that!

No, because both of you are merely looking at each other's trees. However, there is nothing to stop people copying from each others trees - many people do just that to the annoyance of some people. I think the tree opening system on here is daft. Much better to send reports from your family tree software programme. Cheers, Horatia

Does that mean when you add to yours that the one you sent them grows as well ?