Unpleasant or uncomfortable as some things may be, the truth needs to be told. Different people react differently so the important thing is to know the facts. The more one hides the truth, the more possible it is to spread fiction. The idea of a "right to privacy" is a trait of the 20th century - before then, no matter who you were, everyone in the village or the neighbourhood knew all about you - good or bad. That was how the social fabric operated. If you did the wrong thing, everyone would know and you would have to face the consequences of their disapproval as well as the statutory punishment. In the case of identity fraud, which is what many people are concerned about nowdays, it is not really the BMD facts that are the problem, but the everyday bills and letters that are used. In Australia, we have a 100 point identity process - most points for a passport, but one can also use household utility accounts to establish an identity and these can be stolen from letter boxes any day of the year. This happened to a distant relative of mine in the 1990's and she explained that it was her daily routine and the everyday artifacts from that routine that were watched, then stolen. So added to Roy's warning about using your mother's maiden name, if you are really concerned, don't follow the same routine every day and put a lock on your letter box. As for the information in a tree that is made public, as long as your tree is accurate and well-sourced, it really doesn't matter what someone else does with it. Someone has taken large chunks of my ancestry tree and attached them to another one with absolutely no connection except that the name of one person is the same, even though their history is not the same. Yes, it is annoying, but it just illustrates that one always needs to check facts for oneself, not rely on others. For example, when someone shows up in a Census in a different part of the country - is it really likely that a 15 yo girl will leave her family in Lancashire where there is plenty of work and her family are clothing merchants, and go to Scotland where there is no work and she has no relatives? In the main, my public ancestry tree has enabled many people throughout the world to know their family history and that is a great joy to me because until my tree was made available, there was no well-researched and well-sourced tree available. Cheers, Elizabeth