General Chat

I have told people they need permission to put living people on their tree & had the answer "but they know I'm doing my tree & they haven't said no!"

I've seen people post threads looking for lookups on toddlers, get the info & promptly add to their tree. I've reported this action to GR who's reply said they would NOT be taking any action.

If someone asks for a lookup on a minor, my reply is standard "ask the family"

Good reply Claire. I'll remember that if I come across any threads looking for youngsters. It's very dodgy ground.

GR will remove the names of living people from trees so I fail to understand why they allow them on the message boards.

Some people don't want to be found or contacted and we should respect their privacy by not giving full details on message boards that can be read all around the world.

Gwynne

That was the point I put to them Gwynne. There are very valid reasons why some people 'disappear' and it's not for us or GR to sniff them out and throw them to the wolves.

I do think that a lot of people who post on trying to find for living relatives are under the impression it's a Missing Persons site.

The Data Act ,,is used out of context on here,

The Data Protection Act has its limits where family history is concerned and havin a living person named in your tree is not acting out of those Acts,,what is covered is their personal life,

Anything that can be got from public access is not Data Protected,,,,

What you are not allowed to do is *publish*personal information about another person without their prior permission ,and that information coveres such things as,,,,Earnings,Banking details,or anything which takes place in their private life unless its in the public intrest to know,,ie the Freedom of the Press are excluded from this in parts,

I did once get given access to a tree (the person wasn't related, I think) on here to I went to browse it and was stunned to find that the tree builder (a person old enough to have grandchildren) had put in their occupation, wedding dates, birth date, full name etc and the same information for their partner and all of their (living) children.

I also saw another tree (think I was related in this instance) where somebody had included in the notes section the names of the schools and colleges their teenagers attended. It was quite unnerving as, if some person that way inclined was given access to that particular tree, there is nothing in theory stopping them lurking outside the schools. (Maybe this is paranoia from me but I have seen detailed enough trees on here that practically make that situation possible.)

Somebody was saying, people probably don't realise how much information is accessible, and out of interest I once looked up a friend from school (knowing how many siblings they had) and traced their ancestry to the 1851 census, I think (just to see if it was possible). And all I knew to start with was the names of siblings of this person. (Not that I would do anything with the stuff I found, but it was quite amazing as an exercise just to see how far I could get back.)

n
Just so that the people on the 'Biological Father' thread can see what I mean. ;)