ATTENTION Curators, please assist

The Huh was to Veronica...

Yes, Fay, hence my comment in agreement with you.

Ya,I've added a lot of profiles,also.Not as many as some in Geni but a lot. It's not that hard! Would have added more but I got merge before I could ,so I didn't have to, which is kind of too bad as I enjoy adding them myself. The only problem I had was when they wouldn't let me add anything, because I wasn't a pro.But assing them is easy. Sure it takes time but finding them and compiling them the normal was by hand is time consuming too. There's a lot reseach involved

I"m wondering if this profile should be public rather than private?

Rev. Abner Neal

Totally depends on when he was born! You can't tell anything about him as it is private . Also isn't true that people have a right to make certain profiles private?

Beth Marie Beeman
Ernest Z. Crouch, Jr.
is the manager of the Profile and he is online now, you can ask if he will make the Profile/s 'Public'. He has entered two Profiles for Abner Neal, Husband of Barbara Reel, Father of Anne Neal. There is also a dupl. added and managed by Mary Louise Briggs but she hasn't been online since 2008.

Carole (Erickson) Pomeroy, Vol. Curator LOL.. of course, now I've lost my way in the tree and can't find the profile that was linked to Abner. I'll figure it out.

Private User It's not so much WHEN someone way born, but rather if they are 3 generations from someone in the tree. This person is way too old for that and has no business being private. Now I just need to follow my bread crumbs

Beth Marie Beeman
With changes going on with the merge with MyHeritage the Curator's ability to check if the Profile should be Public has been removed until it can be re-worked. The plan is to have all living Profiles 'Private' and deceased Profiles 'Public'.

Oh, I did not understand that. Then I will most likely remove my relatives 3 generations out. I don't want certain things public on the tree, especially those that are one generation from me. I'm not ready to share those photos, family information, etc.

And, I will seriously decide whether I want to be part of this. Geni has always provided some amount of privacy protection. This would be an invasion of that.

And. The more I think about this the more ridiculous it sounds. So, for examples sake, if your daughter has died, your profile would be private but your dead daughter would be public? I can see a certain amount of outrage over this. Same goes for deceased parents.

Ya I may change a bunch to just initals as my gen is the only one alive. Everyone before me is dead. Their might be a couple alive.Anyone who was born or firf in the last 75 years in Mass are private. If Geni does that it will be breaking the law in Mass.

Right now as I understand it, the only change that has been made is that if a profile is of a living person and that person does not manage their own profile and it is NOT an MP, then the profile will be made private. That is similar to the practice on most other sites, e.g., Ancestry.

As I understand it, the policy has not been changed vis a vis profiles of deceased people. However, you ought to consider that a site like Ancestry allows you to search deceased individuals and view their information and only keeps living individuals private.

I don't know what Geni's policy will be vis a vis deceased, I don't believe it has been decided. It was stated that they might move toward living = private and dead = public. You can make your views know, but again, that's standard on a lot of genealogy sites.

Hatte Blejer Of course searching for specific information that is available will always be out there. On Ancestry I can decide to make my whole tree private. No such distinction is available here.

The difference between 'other' genealogy sites and Geni is the notion of one world tree, with everyone connected. Makes for easier breaches of privacy. Apparently the old Geni understood this. The new one seems to be throwing caution to the wind. At some point there will be no point to Geni if all it does is mirror other available services.

Nothing was stated about a situation where deceased children of a Living Profile was involved but I think they would make some type of exception. I will ask about this.
I still could be decided that those deceased within your family group Privacy limit may be selected as Private. I will ask about this.
Claimed profiles of Geni users I would think would be still able to choose what details they want Private or Public on their own Profiles.
There are Users that have separate trees not in the 'Big' tree and also in the 'Big' tree, that have Private Profiles for people outside their Max. family group, I think this is what they want to change the most.

Carole (Erickson) Pomeroy,Vol. Curator Thanks Carole. I guess it depends upon what "they" are trying to accomplish. If it's people with trees that aren't connected to the "Big Tree" - then that's one thing. But to essentially do away with the family circle on trees that are connected, well, that's another philosophy change. Ultimately, for me anyway, the value of Geni is in the connection to the larger "Big Tree" and all the research that has gone into the profiles that go way way way back in time. Current stuff isn't as interesting to me.

I thought some features of geni are supposed to be free now since it joined with myheritage...

That's what I thought. One thing was merging but so I haven't been able to merge.

Beth, the more recent stuff as you call is very important to many people! It's our personal immidiate family! Plus many people are afraid of ID theft and well they should be. We don't know who we are really talking to. Just becauseeveryone has a name and a profile , we don't really know if it's real or not plus what about all the ones with handles that not names and no info on the profiles. all the time!So yes some people are worried.As far profiles going way back , I guess I am one of the lucky nones that allready had 90 per cent of my tree done before finding Geni. I was already way waya back in my tree.

In Mass it is illegal to make public anyone's birth date or death date if born or died within the last 75 years. All my parent's gen have died within the last 24 years , most of my grandparent's gen have bee under 75 year limit and i even have a couple of great grand parents that fall into that category. That's three generations back. If you are as old as I am this is very possible.In-fact younger people could have the same problem if they were the youngest of a very large family.So it would be illegal to make them public. Also getting records old or not can be hard. Some towns won't let you take the books and look through them willy nilly. You have to have a name and in some case you have to prove you are related.I have run into both problems. Not in my own town as they all know me at Town Hall.Some libraries won't let you in their gen record without turning over ID and only taking one or two books at a time plus they give you attitude. Others are very open and free their info. My town library employees are very difficult but then they are dealing with financial woes partly due to a library employee who stole 800 thousand dollars from the town, the GE, the library ete. She's still not in jail . So they are on edge. However, what little they have is public and not gold.

Judy, what law are you referring to? I am not aware of any that prohibits publication of facts such as birth or death date (such a law would probably violate the First Amendment). So-called identity theft has nothing to do with public family trees. It regularly comes in two forms: (1) batch theft of credit card data from merchants, and (2) false credit applications. The latter are ordinarily made by someone who knows the victim, usually someone living in the home who has access to mail, address, phone and social security number. I don't know of a single documented case of "identity theft" that involved using a public family tree. The fear is more a result of a marketing ploy by security firms than anything else.

Randy Schoenberg - thank you for adding your legal expertise to the Private vs Public discussion.

Private tree owners - continue to try to Scare everyone with Incorrect facts - so they can Control what they think is - only Their tree on Geni. This, even when their branch, is part of the 1 Big tree.

We do Not know "yet" (coming in future months) what GENI's New Rules will be - as to Profiles of Dead people.

Glad to hear Geni's focus will be: "Geni.com will remain focused on building a single family tree of the world".
http://help.geni.com/entries/22475611-how-will-the-two-websites-ope...

Now that Geni exists in name & location only - is part of a New company with their old Rules & will develop New ones - the Private vs Public of Dead people profiles - can Finally be resolved, at least I hope :)

If you go to a town or city hall and or anywhere you can pick up vital records, they are prohibted to allowing you or anyone, unless it's yourself to get the records. Of couse if it's a parent with proof you can get their death records ., if it's a recent record and I beleive it 75 years or mor recent. Before that is ok. There was a big too do about that in the Geb. world. They didn't want this to be enacted but it was. Not exactly sure how long ago. Maybe ten years. It's a privatey thing! This is in Mass. . Other states I don't know about.

Peter ID thief can take place anywhere and it's not just in the home. I work in retail and I have plenty customers that are paroniod about ID thirf. Some rightfully so. Several of my customer have fallen victium to it. Others are just afraid, Many people , including myself , will do no business on line. You just don't know who you are dealing with. I have never been a victium .But when you are , you never get over it. If they can hack the government , they can hack anything. You may not know of a problem with Family trees but I bet it happens and I am not the first to mention this on Geni. How do I know you are Peter> How do you know I am Judy? Read up a little someone else was worried, that's I mentioned it.I am just saying , some people are worried. If they want certain profiles to be private , they should be able to have them that way or you are going to have people not putting things on and that will defeat the purpose won't it?

Got to go , must go deal with all those worried customers!

re: "In Mass it is illegal to make public anyone's birth date or death date if born or died within the last 75 years ..."

Then I presume MA is planning on suing the US Census for publishing the 1940 Census data? That's only 72 years. And every 10 years it happens again.

Remember: the only statement made to date concerns PROTECTING information on living person's profiles. Nothing has been stated about changes on the privacy of deceased profiles -- and the Geni staff are well-aware of the various, sometimes conflicting, desires with regard to the privacy of profiles of the "recently deceased" (however that may be defined).

I will jump in here...NH has a similar law to Mass....that precludes death cetif. info from being made public to anyone other than direct relative.....and proof of your relationship MUST be shown to get that document...

This does NOT preclude info from census', cemetery records, or OBIT's....which are in the public view in Mass as well as NH.....it only applies to SPECIFIC documents....

Thank you, Fay!

It may be an interesting legal question if someone has obtained a death certificate and chooses to upload it as a public document in support of a date on a profile -- are they breaking the law if that date was originally posted as a result of viewing a gravestone marker? But that's a minor academic point.

Unless the law explicitly prohibits displaying the birth date on any form of electronic media, then having a death date on the "Public" profile of a person who died in, say 1960, would NOT be in violation of that law -- unless you could prove the only way they would know that date is from one of those SPECIFIC prohibited documents.

This is a great example! Legal issues are typically confined to specific, well-defined, verifiable documents and "artifacts".

Okay, my father died in 2012, if I uploaded his death certificate would I be breaking the Law?