Genealogy Chat

I have received a couple of messages from someone who is enquiring about my relatives. These relatives are still very much alive - am I right to be cautious about confirming/denying that they are who he thinks they are. He is researching a side of the family I have never heard of. I worry I may be infringing their privacy as I'm sure they would be traceable.

You could ask him where the connection is between those that are alive and those that he is researching

If you feel the connect is so far apart you could say though you have permission to have them in your tree you respect there privacy in not passing over any info.

There is nothing to stop him searching it himself but he;ll still need their permission to add it to his tree

Start by asking them why they want to know. Are they related in some way?

Perhaps it's time you considered deleting living people from your GR tree. I keep all of mine offline

I'd ask him to explain the connection and probably never show him my full tree, might get a report for ancestors but nothing about living people. Particularly as you haven't heard of the branch he's reasearching.

I suggest you block your living relatives from being viewed, unless you are activtely helping them find other living family members they have lost contact with, because someone genuiely connected to any of your branches will have shared ancestors that will provide matches on genes.

Personally I never, never, never give any information at all about people who are still alive. I regard it as an infringement of their privacy. It is not for me to tell total strangers about them.

The most I would say is that I know this person, (assuming that the enquirer has mentioned them by name) that they are alive and that therefore I cannot release any information. If he particularly wanted to contact them, I would offer to pass on a message. Then it is up to your relative whether to take it any further.

Nasty suspicious soul that I am, I try very hard not to trust anyone!

Tina

I agree with Tina that offering to pass a message or indeed his contact details on would probably be the best way to proceed.

I have some living relatives who would be most upset if I passed on their information without permission and in order to respect their privacy I never keep details of any of my living relatives anywhere online. This avoids any accidental mishaps.

Some time ago I made contact with another GR member who had one of my aunts in his tree. During our communications it became clear that he had received contact from my cousin whom I had lost contact with. I asked for her contact details and he gave them to me. This lady was not a member of GR and it was her personal contact details he gave me. I contacted her by email and although she was pleased to hear from me and we are still in contact she was not happy that her personal information had been given out so easily. This was not the first time this GR member had done this and that was actually the reason for him having her details at all. She had made contact with him to ask him to remove certain sensitive information from his tree and not to pass it on to others. As a close relative I was already aware of the information referred to and would not have dreamt of including it in a tree online. It was not necessary and would not further anyones research to have it. So please please be careful when passing information about living relatives to others.

Caz

Cornish Susie your thoughts are mine. I think I have been very naive in not blocking living relatives - when I started doing this, it didn't occur to me that anyone could have an ulterior motive for being on here. The writer can say why he's looking in that he's looking for a branch of his family I know nothing of.
The reason the possible non-innocent enquiry idea cropped up was because I spoke to dh about it, and he immediately said I shouldn't go any further with the request. The trouble is, I actually started a reply, thinking of course, everyone on here is totally above board but then didn't send anything. From your posts I realise I was right to take it no further.

It is too late now to concentrate on blocking all living rels, but I will do so tomorrow. it's a while since I've been on here, but the enquiry I received is very recent. I started originally to do family research for my husband's family and did find what I was looking for but as you know, no doubt, it's a very addictive thing to do and I ended up doing stuff for my own family.

Thanks for all your advice.

Further to my last message - having found my living relatives are marked blocked on my account page, the person who contacted me I realise points out he has seen the name of one of my living relatives on my tree.
I am now quite worried about this. Any advice would be helpful.

If you believe they could be traceable - then he could trace them and doesn't really need your help!
As others have suggested - ask him what his relationship to these people is.
Have to admit to being under my married name on here - maiden name too unusual. My mum has remarried - so she's under her married name.
Her parent's are asterixed out - I know who they are! Dad was adopted so he's under his 'birth' (maybe some doubt there! LOL) name, which wasn't my maiden name!
Basically on my tree you can only see the 'true' names from 3 generations back.

I think somebody mentioned a while back, Linda, that - although when you view a tree that is set to "hide living relatives" - if you type in the name of the person in the boxes on here, they show up in a search.

One way round this is to physically type "Living" into the forename box on the tree and "Relative" into the surname box, or some other similar system (I use this kind of thing for illegitimate children if their mothers remarried and had children to separate the fathers out - ie. my great grandad was illegitimate and his mum had a later marriage with children so I gave my unknown ancestor the forename "Unknown", the surname "Spouse" and a date of birth as c. 1838 because that's what year my great-great grandma was born).

My advice is proceed with caution. It MAY be a totally innocent request, but then again ......... ???

Establish first what connection they have to your relatives, being aware that they may have no connection but have gleaned info. from online sources etc. Always be on the defensive, there's so many suspect people out there. Personally, without concrete evidence of a very firm connection, I wouldn't give them any details, and even with concrete evidence I'd be questioning their reasons for wanting contact.

It's they who should disclose themselves not you. Why not ask them all about themselves, and see what they are prepared to tell you.

Kate and others

I know there is the option to hide living relatives.

1. does it work
2. if you are importing your own tree, how on earth do you go through and delete all living relatives before importing the tree? I can't even remember who they are.

Margaret

I'm with others here. Putting their names in your tree is already violating their privacy, unless you have their express and informed consent.

The "hide living relatives" thing is a bit of a pain since it will hide anyone born within a certain period for whom no death date is given. I just don't bother with death dates in my tree, so a bunch of dead people would be hidden if I did that.

Here's my suggestion. ;)

Call them Living Relative as explained above.

Then put their whole name in as a middle name.

So they would be

Living
Mary Ann Smith
Relative

If you did allow someone to look at your tree, they would see the name if they clicked on the person's box. And you'd always be able to see who it was if you needed to. But no search would find it.

But generally, it's not a great idea to let people see your tree anyway. All they need is the info about their particular line that they don't already have, once they've established the connection to your satisfaction, and you can give that to them by typing it out.

Linda

Though you have your relatives hidden they are only hidden when someone looks at your tree ( if you have opened it to them ) when you do a name search in the search tree on Green tab they are NOT hidden

Julie

GR have tightened up a bit.,If you search for a "living" person in someone's tree, they now come up as "No Matches Found" but as Julie say they still appear using the boxes at the top of this screen

I contacted a hot match recently but was told that they do not share their tree with anyone who hides living relatives. I did open my tree to them and they then gave me some information, which I found interesting. You never know which way to go.

I dunno, Ann. That is exactly the kind of person I would not open my tree to!

I'm not actually thrilled about getting trees oened for me. Navigating around somebody else's family, one generation at a time -- I usually can't even begin to figure out how the tree owner is related to the person of interest. I'd rather chat -- figure out who our shared ancestor is, which line we belong to, whatever.

I feel quite strongly that it is not my job to be giving personal information about other living members of my family to strangers. Once we've determined that we're long-lost cousins with a lively interest in our mutual families, yes indeed, then stories can be swapped. A stranger demanding to see my living family members' personal details in order to share family history? Nah. I'll find it myself.

I have living relatives listed asjust ( living )no names or dates of births

with all the details on the internet they would be able to trace them if they wanted to wether you gave them info or not.

Ask them what connection they think they are to your family and explain you do not give out living relatives info.

I never did see her tree but that didn't bother me at all. She did give me some fascinating information.

Thanks for this interesting thread - I will now remove my "allow" tree.