A Duplicate YOU

Private User do you have their date of birth entered to make them minors?

I don't fully understand as I seldom use Geni, but I know it is not very private. There is a free area and a pay expanded area. I do not pay for this service so I am limited as to what I do. If you want somthing from me it should be dealt directly as I let any family have data that I have.

Is that what happened? I have had the same problem

Mimi, do you know a @Braden Bouchard ? Is he a collaborator or a close family member? I find it hard to believe that someone would have so much information on your family profiles unless they are 4th cousin or closer. This is the person who has added the multiple profiles a little over 2 weeks ago.

@Roland Bouchard is your 11th cousin, and Braden and Nicholas are brothers, and appear to be your 10th cousin. Too distant to obtain the information they somehow obtained. Pretty scary...

Mimi, - post a link to this Braden Bouchard?

Private is listed as a family group member of you which gives full access to see the profiles of your children and this Branden might have family's family access to see the same.

Braden and Nicholas, despite having the same last name, are also distant relatives of Roland, so I find it extremely unlikely that they obtained profile information in this fashion...

Private User we're looking into this for you. I understand that you've sent help an email about this?

I'll also point out that the new privacy rules that we'll be releasing in the next few weeks will make private profiles even more private, and will remove them from gedcom exports of users who aren't your friends or family.

@Noah Tutak, wouldn't it be prudent to disable GEDCOM downloads until Geni can provide them in a secure fashion? I am sure everyone will understand the temporary loss of functionality if it means keeping their profile data secure, per the terms of your security agreement.

I agree with David...I feel very frightened for Mimi's loss of privacy. I have just altered some of my families details just incase....but it may already be too late!!!

I personally don't think that people should be able to download gedcoms at all.

I personally don't think that people should be able to download gedcoms at all.

If you choose to block yourself, as far as I know you can't investigate their children. But people have to physically block each relative they add to their tree, including their children, from being read beyond 4th cousin.

MiMi - sorry to hear that this has happened. I find this disturbing. Just to let you know, I just took a peek at your profile and I am only able to see one of your childrens profiles(full name and picture). The other two are only first initial and last name on white rectangle.

I do see your picture and full name, but I think that is because we are collaborating.

Please keep us posted as to the outcome with Geni.com help. I hope you put this as urgent?

.......actually - on the two children that I mentioned I could see their first initial and last name only - actually they are marked as (child).

Geni is not private and well, it can open people up to identity thief..

I have removed my kids from Geni. My husband is not listed by name and all information about me has been taken out. I have removed all labels of me in pictures.

What we are going to do is just remove minors from gedcoms altogether. We should be able to get this fix out tomorrow.

It gets more and more scarry everyday. Do you have an idea of the extent or size of the download ?

People should not be able to download gedcoms from geni at all. If they want information from the database, they should have to get it one person at a time. Identity thieves will be less likely to attack people who are on here if it is more difficult for them to get the data.

Stop gedcom downloads now.

People should not be able to download gedcoms from geni at all. If they want information from the database, they should have to get it one person at a time. Identity thieves will be less likely to attack people who are on here if it is more difficult for them to get the data.

Stop gedcom downloads now.

People should not be able to download gedcoms from geni at all. If they want information from the database, they should have to get it one person at a time. Identity thieves will be less likely to attack people who are on here if it is more difficult for them to get the data.

Stop gedcom downloads now.

I think they shouldn't be able to upload a gedcom. I put mine in one record at a time, so that I could check date-by-date as information became available.

This makes it so frustrating @patrick haye.

Patrick, I appreciate your concern, but I think that most users would disagree with you. GEDCOM is an industry standard that is used to move information from one application to another. Under our new privacy rules, only your friends and close relatives will be able to export information (more than first initial last name) of your close relatives. That is already mostly the case today, but will be even more so in the near future.

How many people reading this, based on the what has happened still think that GEDCOMs should be downloaded? I never liked it in the first place. That "standard" is not always so standard, and often seems to introduce errant information.

There is a remarkable amount of wrong information on the internet. Geni is not exempt from that, and appears to be an easy place to spread bogus "genealogies", and make it impossible to eliminate the bogus information because of "splitting the tree." This gets spread even more by allowing GEDCOM up and downloads.

@Patrick Hays: I strongly disagree with you. While, I grant you, geni should do more to protect privacy... gedcoms themselves are not bad.

How else would you be able to make a back up copy of the info you put in?

Are you really foolish enough (or masochistic enough) to believe that backups should be taken 1 profile at a time?

I have a right to the data I put here... I *DEMAND* the right to get a backup.

Noah... I suggest you take note... when I say "I *DEMAND* the right to get a backup"... I don't just mean the profiles. I mean *ALL* data. Pictures, documents, sources, *EVERYTHING*.

Jason P Herbert

a bit of an over-reaction for 2010. your government is more of a worry than some genealogist.

@M. ♫, while distressing, just try googling your name .... I see 4,090 hits just for your name alone on a google search ... including other sites you have family trees on.

In contrast, I only find 960 hits on my own name.

As for gedcoms ... I have family members that don't have computers but are interested in the family tree. Downloading a gedcom and then printing it out for them keeps them in the loop and they can then add information they may know that I had no idea of.

However, I don't download an entire gedcom. I go to that particular family member and download their personal gedcom family line for them. It is what they are interested in, not the over 5000+ listed for my wifes side of the tree.

As far as GEDCOM's go, all I ask is that Geni enforce their advertised security model with respect to downloaded GEDCOMS. This was the agreement that allowed me to sign up and use this site. If this is too difficult for Geni to handle, then at least enforce what every other family tree service does, which use the "Living" flag=FALSE, and provide all profile details for these records (all attributes, including pics, sources, etc). If "Living"=TRUE, either ignore them all together, or provide surname and gender ONLY for these records.

Sorry, cousins. Even though we all appear to be related now, until we are throwing back a few cold ones at the annual family reunion, I would prefer to keep my living relatives' information private. Thanks for listening.

Mimi, All my family information is out there as well! And I have my permissions locked down pretty tight. They have all set all these profiles of my family to shared. So they are open to the entire world. Have you contacted Geni.com? I'm placing a ticket right now! They better delete every single one of these immediately!

@patrick william hays @kyong-mi roxanne arcalaI @jeffrey roland gentes
do me a favor a LOG OUT of geni and then see how much information is actually available for people who aren't on a tree to see.

if you don't want your full names showing then don't put your full name for the display name Put your first name only. As well those of you worried about how much information others can see that are not on the tree....
@david embrey
Just because someone is a distant cousin doesn't mean anything. It's possible they got the information through connecting other Gedcoms from other families they are related to and thus related to you.

If you are so worried about identity theft then maybe you should post less personal information?!?!?!?!