General Chat

Hi to all in our community, I have just become aware of the security status in the browser bar, when viewing my tree is shown as a locked padlock and remains so
up to my viewing back to 1874, however on going back to 1833 the security symbol
changes to one of unsecured ?? therefor others are able to view date on your tree

Should "we" be concerned at this? why is this happening ? surely all data we upload should be secure, and not available for "others" to view unless given permission to do so.

I would like to know if this raises concerns among you? ??

Bob G

Shouldn't think so. It is all a matter of public record.

I have just looked at the very bare tree I have on here, mine is elsewhere, but 1800 and 1839 are the earliest records I have here, and the padlock is showing.

It wouldn't raise concerns anyway. The people are dead, it doesn't matter who knows who my gt gts were, and no one can just 'view' the tree anyway without permission, though there are ways of working it out...if you have a lot of spare time and are very bored!

Like Rose, I only have the bare minimum on my tree on here and keep the full tree on FamilyTreeMaker. The earliest I have on here is 1775 but I still have the padlock showing.

However as already stated I wouldn't be bothered as everything on the tree is available from public record offices and if someone is interested in my dead ancestors then they are very welcome to look them up.

Kath. x

Everyone on my tree, who I have looked at, has the locked padlock symbol including one at 1710.

Is it possible that the data that shows as unlocked was put on the tree a long time ago? In my case the tree is imported from the master on Ancestry every so often. You coul try a slight amendment to an unlocked entry and see if that locks it.

Hi Thanks for your responses, its weird, I have tried going back on all branches of
my tree and some do not have this problem? but others do, if i refresh page and start again each time, I get the same result ???

My only concern is I do put a lot of personal dater on tree, as Iam not a very good note taker, and always losing the "fag packets" I have put notes on :-D

I am hoping someone can explain why it only happens on some of the branches, with
regularity, and not others, I am perplexed, but thanks for your views on this

Bob

Mine also shows a locked padlock right back to the earliest records in 1680. I'm not sure whether it makes any difference when data was added. Kense may well be right, but I haven't done anything to my tree for years.

I also agree with all the others, that as the information is on public record, it makes little difference whether the tree is private or not.

Hi Kense thanks for your suggestion, tried that but did not work as I said weird,
I will come back on the board if and when I have an answer, hopefully soon.

Bob

The padlock simply shows that you have a secure connection using https:// rather than http://. In order to get a site certificate without which https:// is impossible the site owner has to buy a cert from one of the cert issuing authorities. The site certs expire after 3 years. Some browsers deny access to sites with expired certs.

The padlock does not denote whether your data is safe or not. Some quite large organisations have found that out the card way when they failed to encrypt data on their servers.

That at least is the theory.

In practice these days those with sufficiently powerful computers can easily break into an https:// session without either party being aware of it unless they had the means and know how. Low life has discovered how to misuse https//

The best defense is to use a secure browser such as Firefox together wiith Google DNS or Free DNS. If possible use a decent third party router rather than the naff stuff that ISPs ship.

If you want to know more the O'Reilly series is a good place to start.
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