From: "P WILLIAMS" <p.williams352@btinternet.com> > I don't wish to put any spokes in the wheel so to speak, but are we > 100% sure that we should give out living people's details on our > lists.   I work for the Government and under our DPA rules we are not > allowed to give out any details unless prior consent from the person > in question. I know there is a great deal to be found about anybody > these days, if we search hard enough, but we have to remember that > security for what ever reason is of the utmost importance, especially > in our current climate.   We, at our place of work have procedures to > follow even if the police require information, we must remember that > Loan Sharks and Debt Collectors all have devious ways of tracing > people and may use even this list as a way of tracking a person down. > In no way am I saying that this is the case, but are we sure?   I'm > sorry, to be a spoil sport in all of this, but would it be better if > we could advise the person on how to trace rather than pass any > relevant information on. For example 192.com.< Oh dear, here we go again with the usual paranoid nonsense! I get the feeling some people will not be happy until we are all walking around with numbers stamped across our foreheads (or some other appropriate part of our anatomy) and not permitted to have names at all. Am I not allowed to know the name of my next-door neighbour and what he does for a living or the names of his wife and children? Genealogists should be the very last people to impose censorship on themselves. Are we not supporters of freedom of information and should we not be calling for more of it, not less? Let's get one thing clear, shall we? No-one's birthdate is their own exclusive private property! It is a matter of public record that I was born on a certain day of a certain month in the year 1940 in Bradford, Yorkshire. Any half decent family historian could find me and I can usually find most people's birth, including their mother's surname which have been on record since the third quarter of 1911 in the GRO birth indexes. Name me any moderately well-known person you like and I will take a bet that you will find their full birth details with Google. There are so many other aids to identifying people - phone books both on paper and online, electoral registers, etc - that to claim we as family historians are putting people at risk is simply scaremongering. I find it ironic, amusing even, that you as a government civil servant should be calling for us to impose restrictions on ourselves when we have all read of scandal after scandal of this government's appalling record of collecting enormous amounts of data on everybody and then LOSING IT !!!!! All this paranoia about identity theft is just so much wearisome rubbish. The simple solution is NEVER to give your mother's maiden name to a bank or any other financial institution. MAKE SOMETHING UP, for pete's sake! All they want, after all, is a codeword that only you and they know. I changed mine the day the GRO indexes went online, so it won't help anybody to find it. Really, I do get fed up of all this paranoia about living people. The only complaints I've ever had from my relatives when writing up the family history and including them in descendant charts is when I've accidentially left somebody out! Let's take a common sense view and not a panic- stirring one, shall we? -- Roy Stockdill Professional genealogical researcher, writer & lecturer Newbies' Guide to Genealogy & Family History: www.genuki.org.uk/gs/Newbie.html "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." OSCAR WILDE