"Genealogy & Privacy: Keeping It In The Family"

When doing research on your family history one of the most important things to consider right off the top, especially in this digital age that we’re all now helplessly immersed in, is the need for personal guidelines on the issue of privacy.
 
Never before in history has it been so easy to gain access to personal information. With the help of the internet, anyone can become a genealogist and post their family history on the web for all to see. However, publicly published family trees can become easy targets for identity thieves. For any living person in your family tree you may have data about them that they may not even be aware could be available to the general public – if any of this information is to be published on a web site, you have some special considerations to make. These may even involve some persons in your tree who are deceased.
 
The first thing I did when setting up my genealogy site was to find a way to keep it in the family. I did this by creating a “splash” page as my home page which requires the entry of a password to get into and be able to view anything on the site. I won’t get into the technical programming know-how of web site password protection here, but there are different ways of doing it – these methods can be Googled by the DIY web site designers out there. Once you get password protection in place, you can control which individuals can see the content on your web site by sending them the password upon request. It’s also a good idea to change the password periodically to be extra safe, just don’t forget to let anyone who has access know when you do.
 
The next thing to do was to figure out what my personal “privacy code” was going to be. This was to be my ethics statement and deal with how I would handle all of the private information I was going to be gathering. Common sense dictated that people in my tree who were still living would need special rules to protect their private information, even from other family members. Some information may be very sensitive in nature. Even data collected about some deceased relatives may be too sensitive to publish. If the web site was to be accessible by the public, it would be appropriate to remove all data associated with any living relatives, as well as to limit data associated with deceased relatives who have close connections to any living relatives. One could replace the name of each living relative with the word “Living” to protect their identities, and only publish the names of their immediate ancestors with no other vital information.
 
Because my site is private, I chose not to restrict information associated with deceased relatives unless the data is extremely sensitive, looking at each case individually. For living relatives, I chose to only publish their names with no other vital data, unless I was expressly granted permission by that person to publish more information about them. That said, I must be prepared to remove them completely from the published version of my tree if they so request it.
 
Once in a while a really juicy story is bound to surface about a long-lost ancestor, and I love to share a juicy story. However, even these may be inappropriate for a public site or blog as they may inadvertently divulge too much private information. It is best to keep these stories within the family as well – I have set up a separate password-protected page on my site for just such a purpose (I call mine “Family Jewels”).
 
It sounds all too obvious, but the genealogist must remember that everyone they collect data on is a real human being. Respect for privacy and the use of common sense must be the order of the day.