General Chat

I have a very very distant relative who has posted my personal family details on this site. He has never met me, will not reply to emails and will not give me a telephone number or an address. now when i post my family details they will show as duplicates. Anyone trying to contact about my family will send emails to him which he doesnt pass on. does anyone know if there is anything i can do about this? sorry to moan. anyway. I think this is a good site lisa xx

Lisa I dont know what you can do about this one, I think you will just have to hope that the people that contact him will also contact you. Because if I saw the same names I would contact both. I thought people had to have permission to put names on that are living. Perhaps you could email GC and ask their advice. sorry I couldnt help. Debbie

This is inevitable as trees expand, since to obtain a match a name MUST appear in two (or more) trees. I think the only issue at stake is the one of obtaining consent before posting details of living persons.

Lisa, This is on the terms and conditions for this site: " Important: Members must have, and continue to have, the express permission of any living person to include their details in a family tree. If a Member is asked to do so, relevant details must be removed. Members are the controllers of the information they input relating to living persons, and therefore have obligations under the privacy and data protection laws (such as the Data Protection Act 1998). GenesConnected may remove all or part of a family tree if so required." If you've asked him to remove those details and he hasn't the next step would be to contact GenesConnected. You might want to send him those terms and conditions as a final warning before you call the big guns in. Hope that helps, Crista

thanks for your advice and support. its much appreciated.

Lisa Surley if you have put people in your tree then they must have given permission? Therefore if they have allowed their data to be submitted to this site, how can your relative be breaking the rules. I know he hasn't personally asked permission but by you adding the names you're implying their permission has been given. I myself have added names from other peoples trees, assuming permission had already been given. Am I breaking the rules by doing this?

Helen You do have to ask permission of aliving person. This relative of lisa`s did not ask permission. For example I have my son and Daughters name on here, and if I logged on one day and found a distant relative that I dont even know or talk to had added them to their tree I would be most upset. If they asked me first I would gladly give my permission. And I think you are breaking the rules. I cannot believe you have been copying other peoples trees without asking. Or did I misunderstand and you did ask permission to copy them?

This could get really complicated. Does this mean that if you give someone on GC access to your tree, you should ask every living person in your tree first? Or must the person who wants to see your tree ask them? Or do you only have to ask them if the other person is related and wants to add them to their tree? And how can the other person ask them if they don't know them, but are related?

This is a bit complicated isn't it? I personally do not have any living person on my tree apart from myself and my husband. If anyone finds they have a link with me then they will be given access to my 856 names with pleasure but they're all dead! I know my children, grandchildren etc. cousins and children of cousins etc.etc. are part of my family too but I prefer dealing with the history side of it. I suppose some people will disagree with this approach and think I am mad but I look forward to hearing opinions! I just feel more comfortable working this way. There are a number of distant relatives I know about but wouldn't be able to contact for permission to add them anyway and of course I think permission is absolutely vital. If living persons are added with permission then fine but they need to know what they have given permission for i.e. their details may be accessed by someone on the site with a link. I seem to have rambled a bit here but hopefully you'll get the gist of it! Beryl, Darlington DUR

If I have asked permission of a living relative to put their details on the site in my tree surely, that means that other tree's can use the details as well. As the person has already given permission. I also explain to people that the details will be on the internet for others to read and use. Most people are happy for this to happen as they are interested in family history ! Or, am I wrong????

Lisa, Maybe you could post a message on this board naming the relative in question, and give him an opportunity to respond here? He may have changed his e-mail address. I have tried to make a contact via this board and there's nothing GC can do if people haven't notified the change. Marion

Regarding living relatives in trees: With so much identity theft around nowadays I'd really be wary of adding any living person to a tree and then sharing that tree with someone else. Not only will they have date and place of birth but they will also have the mother's maiden name and that is also used as a means of identification. The common convention is to replace the first name with the word "Living". Crista

I usually type in the Forename as 'Living', but after reading all your comments above, I think I am probably safer to just delete off these names because some are very distant cousins and I couldnt contact them if I wished to! I thought that by just having their names as 'Living' I had covered my obligations, but thinking about it, I have decided to delete them off this tree completely. That leads me to another problem. When I next upload from GEDCOM, does anyone know how to stop PAF exporting all of the records? Otherwise I will have to delete them all over again each time I reload the tree? Sally, Coventry

Lisa After a few weeks of joining the site I noticed that my husband and both sons had been added without their permission. I immediately contacted GC who dealt with the matter quickly and efficiently. They kept me informed of the situation by telling me who had put the names on the site and said that if the person responsible did not remove them within a certain time period then they would do it. Your situation is, I know, different as you want to add your details also but I hope this helps those people who, like me, are annoyed at finding their family have been added without their permission being asked for and granted. When filling in details of relatives it clearly states that living relatives must give their permission to their details being added to the site. Yvonne

Georgina I agree with you - I dont know whether some of my names are still alive or not. Last night I began the laborious task of removing people from my tree born 1930 onwards (I figured that would be a safe margin) unless I knew they were definately deceased. Where I needed to keep Living Rellys on my tree for structure (eg my parents and I couldnt put my grandparents on till I had entered my parents) I changed their forenames to Living. Mum + Dad had obviously already given me permission to use their details, but I decided that it was probably safer not to display them, after reading the above messages. Its a shame though. Still my own personal tree still has loadsa lovely names on it and I shall use Genes just for the dead people! Regards Sally, Coventry

the dilemma... I have a tree with 6000+ family members on it and another branch with 3500+ members. yes lots of them are dead but yes some are living too. If you have a proven link with this tree then as far as i am concerned you would be entitled to have a copy of the tree you belong to. Just because i let you know who they are it doesnt mean that you have permission to post it openly on the internet for all to see, I expect you to ask permission first. If it was posted on the internet already then the information would openly be available to anyone who wished to download it. my immediate relatives details have been posted on 4 different sites, they have been added to ancestry.com on 12 different files and also added to this site. i have contacted the person who posted my family on numerous occassions, firstly introducing myself, then asking kindly if he would remove living individuals, then supplying names of people i would please like removed. I received a reply once saying "yes we are related - i will be in touch" he never bothered again, he did not answer any of my queries. I retried to contact him again, many emails, asking would he contact me, id like to discuss something. still he hasnt bothered. the dilemma is that a relative has his details posted, his name, place and date of birth are here, his parents details are here, his wifes details are here and his daughters are entered her, names, dates, places all are openly available and his objection is that its a breach of his privacy and a security risk. If someone told me something personal about themselves, i would not post it on the internet, not without asking first. Please , please , please when posting entries on the internet would you please removed living people or replace them with Auntie Jones, Uncle Smith etc.., even mum or dad as someone suggested.

From my understanding of UK Law, this seems complex but actually is very simple: - You may not post personal information (eg birth dates) of any living individual onto any location accessible by others (eg genesconnected) without their explicit permission to do so. Therefore I would not dare to upload my (.gedcom) family tree to genesconnected, much as I would like to. If and when I get time, I manually copy records from my (400 record) local file to my (100 record) gc file. Unfortunately I have not got the time to manually identify the approx. 250 deceased people from my records to upload them. Does anyone have a better solution please?

Can someone help me please ?how do you delete someone from tree, I have living relative on my G.C. tree and will follow advise and just have deceased relatives apart from myself and close family on site. Thanks meryl

I have used the rule of born 1925 or earlier. The only ones breaking this rule are in my own direct line. I already know where to find siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins etc. so don't feel the need to show them on here. I have to admit to cringing inside whenever I see a name with birth date of say 2003. I can understand that people are proud of their new additions but surely the child is not in any sort of position to give permission for its details to appear for all and sundry to view. Especially as quite a few people now seem to be giving a full postal address.

If TheLaw is an ass, then the Data Protection Acts are its illegitimate great grandchildren. It is the most oddly interpreted Law I have ever come across. It seems to me that any information, e.g. phone directories are in the Public Domain, but private things are not. I received Spam emails from some people which when opened displayed a blank screen yet ntl have refused to give me their full email address so I can ask them not to email me. Even though I can clearly see some of the address on my "Check email" page. Apparently it would contravene the Data Protection Act for them to tell me the final few letters!?!?! Therefore I have resisted the temptation to put living relatives on GC, but when I find a confirmed relative I am quite happy to send (by snail mail) a copy of the relevant parts of my tree including living ones. Jim