> "I asked you to remove my family from ancestry.com. They are not related > to you, you did not ask permission to include them. You are setting > yourself up for a possible lawsuit putting names on the Internet without > asking permission." > I received the above email from the person who gave me the information. > The information is privatized but the person is listed as the source. I > don't understand her concern. > It is not easy removing a file from Ancestry.com because it is an > old file and has to be done by them which I have requested. > > I'm not sur she has a legal leg to stand on either. > Ideas? Comments? > > Pat Ricci Hi Pat and all .... I guess I'll follow my lifelong tradition, and be a curmudgeon- contrarian. Bear with the genealogical geezer! ;-))) I have a hard time thinking of genealogical information as "mine". I always have. I got started in this hobby in 1957 in high school, and the folks who provided me with with my first taste of my ancestors and cousins who went before were all gone by the time I was in college. I remember how happy Great-Aunt Corrine, my grandmother Anna, and great-granduncle Joe were when that little kid really wanted to know. It was "their" information and they really appreciated that it would be passed on to family members yet to be born. But it was also "ours". They didn't own their ancestors, we all do. They are as much part of the history of the world we all live in as stories of World War heroism, photographs of places and people of long ago, and the histories of all our particular parts of the world ... with all their ideas, honors, failures, and warts. Not one of the 430,000 people in my publically available genealogy is mine and mine alone. That's the whole point! And that includes ME ... I'm somebody's grandson, son, father, grandfather, nephew, husband, and yes, even a cousin, maybe even somebody's crazy 7th cousin twice removed that recorded all this information, for whatever earthly reason! And you know, 100 years from now, I'll be a lot of people's long dead relative. ;-))) So I don't care about "privacy", right? Not so. I get as disturbed as anyone about the slimes that conduct identity theft. But what is the difference today? Dishonest people registered dead people to vote throughout the history of democracy ... and they just copied a name off a gravestone, out of an old preserved newspaper, or anywhere else they could find it. People have always pretended to be someone they were not. Neither genealogy or the Internet created this opportunity, or really even made it any easier! In fact, I'd even be so bold (or foolish, if you wish) to believe that the explosion of information, technology, and retrieval capability makes it more difficult, not easier, to steal identities successfully. It is a heck of a lot easier now than 100 years ago to find out the truth. I do have a longstanding bone to pick with organizations and websites that encourage people to create passwords and identity-proof questions that deal with things that many people will know about you from publically-available records. There are lots of obscure details about yourself that nobody will ever write down, even if at some time in the future we become famous (or infamous)! Us gray-hairs are in a strange situation here. We grew up with a fairly open society, and we discovered long after the fact that many people we trusted were cheating us blind. That made us paranoid, and we started being aware of the nasty folks around us. It didn't seem to be a good idea to be too trusting anymore, so we rolled ourselves up in our shells. The current economic situation hasn't helped either! On the other hand, take a close look at those grandkids of yours. If you've had much experience with the pre-teens, teens, and many of the 20-somethings in our society right now, a number of things stand out. One of them is that they are a heck of a lot more open in their feelings, beliefs, and ideas than we are, perhaps more than we've ever been . Many of them likely will, eventually, become as nervous as we are, but they will also have to recognise the changes in their own grandkids, and be better than we are, or at least a heck of a lot smarter! -- Paul J. Lareau Freedom for Imprisoned Books! Don't Chain them to a Dusty Bookshelf. Visit: http://www.bookcrossing.com and my bookshelf at: http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/pjlareau - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [POST] 135 E. Viking Dr. #301, Little Canada MN 55117 USA [FAMILY WEB SITE] http://www.lareau.org/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "Paul J. Lareau" <paul@lareau.org>