Are you putting out information about yourself, your children, and other living relatives over the internet? If so, this message is for you!!! Missing Links, Vol.2 #22 Where Are Your GEDCOMS Tonight? By Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG Is personal information about you, your children and living relatives posted on a web page where any crook or kook can find it? It may be if you have shared your genealogical data via GEDCOM, pedigree charts or family group sheets. (Use any search engine and look for your names and check GenDex (http://www.gendex.com/ ) as well as visit some of the commercial vendors' websites who encourage software owners to contribute their GEDCOMS.) Are you guilty of invading the privacy of others, such as your living relatives, by passing along their genealogical data to someone else without their expressed written permission? You are, if you have shared your genealogical databases or research notes with a third party. The dead do not have a right to privacy, but the living do. Genealogists are sharing, caring people, and most of us think nothing of handing over all of our genealogical data to distant cousins, even strangers. "We should start thinking," says a Prodigy member in the Genealogy BB's COFFEE SHOP topic under "Sharing Data on the Web." The idea of sharing is good and technology has made it easy. However, technology is not an exclusive tool for honest people. If detailed personal information about you and your living relatives is on the internet, crooks can and do find it, and some scam artist may use it to hoodwink your grandmother into giving out the secrets that will open her bank account. It has happened. Your relatives have the same rights to privacy that you do and among these rights are: 1. Appropriation of one's name or likeness by another without consent; 2. The right to be free of unreasonable and highly offensive intrusions into one's seclusion, including the right to be free of highly objectionable disclosure of private information in which the public has no legitimate interest; and 3. False light in the public eye -- the right to avoid false attributions of authorship or association. Publishing (and putting it on a GEDCOM, chart or on the web is publishing) genealogical information about a living person without their consent may involve all three aspects of their right to privacy and they may be able to seek legal relief through a civil lawsuit. What can you do? -- If you find someone has posted information about you or living relatives on the internet, ask them to take it down. Be as forceful as is necessary. -- Exclude information about any living persons from your GEDCOMS and charts before sharing with others. Most genealogy software will allow you to exclude all persons born after a particular date, which you can pick as 1920, 1910 or 1900, for example. Or use a handy utility program called GEDClean (http://members.aol.com/tomraynor2/gedclean.htm). A copy of this freeware (Windows 3.x or Win95) is posted in the Genealogy File Library or your can download it from the above web site. -- Educate yourself about privacy issues on the internet: (http://genealogy.tbox.com/jog/aug96/advanced.html) Share your genealogical data, but don't intrude on others' privacy and do not allow them to violate yours. Michele in MO Please visit any or all my pages below. FAMILY GENEALOGY RESEARCH: http://members.tripod.com/~genealogy_thomas FLUVANNA CO. VIRGINIA: http://members.aol.com/leeintn/private/fluvanna/michele.htm KIDD MAIL LIST: send message "subscribe " to <Kidd-L-request@rootsweb.com> To "unsubscibe" send message to the address above. To Post a message: send message to Kidd-L@rootsweb.com BRAGG MAIL LIST To Post a message: send message to <BRAGG-L@rootsweb.com>