Genealogy: Finding Your Folks

Protecting your relatives’ identities

By Judy Fowler Kilgore
Genealogy Columnist

Judy Fowler Kilgore is the religion editor and genealogy columnist for The Citizen. She regrets that time does not permit her to do personal family research for others. She may be reached at jkilgore@thecitizennews.com or jodiek444@aol.com.

I received an e-mail this week in response to last week’s column about not owning your ancestors. The writer wishes to remain anonymous since she says there are several with her same name in the Fayette area. We can do that as long as I know her name and can substantiate that the letter is legitimate.

The letter has a lot of merit and makes some good points. It also contains a topic I wanted to cover anyway. Ms. Anonymous writes:

“I enjoyed your article.

“I am an avid genealogical researcher and have been so for probably 27 years. I have been able to trace my family back to 1709 when they entered through Pennsylvania. There is a lot of misinformation out there, and people must realize that everything must be checked at least twice by comparing land records, baptism records, wills, etc., and that the spelling of the names really isn't as important as one would think. Phonetics really was the word of the day.

“Now on an extremely important issue that your readers may not be aware of. While we don't own our ancestors, we do own our own identities. Computers allow access to information that make it easy to steal your identity. Genealogical sites are the perfect resource tool. They not only give your complete name, date of birth, birth place and married name, they also give your mother’s maiden name. Please advise your readers to be careful of what they post and print. Be respectful of current generations by not making their information available where thieves can ruin the lives of our loved ones.

“Thank you.” (Name withheld by request.)

Protecting the identities of living persons is a very important point. Many of you may not be aware of how to do it and still submit your family tree for online research.

I am only going to cover two Web sites which place family trees online — Rootsweb and Ancestry. Access to family trees on both of them is free and what goes to one, goes to the other since Ancestry owns Rootsweb. Actually the parent company of Ancestry.com, MyFamily.com., owns Rootsweb and many other genealogy sites on the Internet.

Since the 1930 census is currently the most recent census available to the public, access to that information is available to anyone who can gain access to those records. And, because of that, both Rootsweb and Ancestry automatically protect the identities of anyone on your family tree who was born after 1930 and has no death date. However, there are many people out there born before 1930 who are still very much alive and their identities should be protected too. Identity theft today is a very serious problem and we should not take chances. So, what do you do?

You can override that 1930 cutoff date within your genealogy program before you make a Gedcom. I don’t know how Family TreeMaker does it, but my Reunion program handles that matter under “Reports” and “Privacy.” When it asks me who is private, I manually fill in the date of 1904. That is just my random choice. Therefore, anyone born after 1904 with no death date is listed as “living.” You, however, may set any date you wish.

Rootsweb and Ancestry take it a step further in their setup by eliminating all sources, notes and other information connected to living persons. That is a very courteous and considerate gesture.

After I get my privacy preferences set in my genealogy program, I export the Gedcom to my hard drive, then go online to Rootsweb and submit my tree, filling in other preferences on the setup page. I use the standard setup because it’s the easiest to do.

The other thing you can do to protect your relatives’ privacy is to be very careful and discerning when you share information with another person. Do not share birth dates or any other personal information with someone you don’t know. If you send a genealogy report or a Gedcom to anyone, set your privacy preferences before you send it. I can count on one hand the number of people with whom I share all of my family information. And I am confident those people will respect my privacy as well as the privacy of my living relatives.

Other places you want to be careful about are the message board sites. I shudder when I see some unthinking person place phone numbers, birth dates of living people, and other information out there which should remain private. This is done in all innocence and trust, but these days there are few people you can trust — especially on the Internet.

Even the Roots-L lists are not a safe place to discuss personal information since they are all archived on the Rootsweb site and anyone has access to messages that were sent years ago.

So, always be on the safe side and double-check your messages before sending them. Privatize your Gedcom before submitting it. If you have to share personal information, do it in a private e-mail with someone you trust. That way, if information on your relatives gets thrown out there, you will not be the one who is responsible.

I appreciate the writer’s bringing this important matter to my attention. It

needed to be said. Her points about spelling and phonetics will be addressed

in another column. The Internet has changed the way we handle that also.

I welcome all letters and e-mails about genealogy and info on south metro Atlanta families. Send them to The Citizen, Drawer 1719, Fayetteville, GA 30214; e-mail jkilgore@thecitizennews.com or jodiek444@aol.com. Any letters and/or e-mails I receive are subject to being used in the column.

Until next week, happy hunting!