Can I make a deceased relative confidential?

WS86

Some well-meaning person not related to me has created an entry for a recently deceased relative, with his date of passing. I already have an entry for this relative attached to my family tree marked "Living" and I would like to keep this relative confidential for a year or two to prevent any fraud.

Is there a way to hide a deceased relative's page? Of course this would not prevent another well-meaning person from recreating yet another entry.

I suppose I could delete or merge out the unwanted entry with an explanation.

Dennis J Yancey

In short - there really is not a good way to do what you are asking.

as you yourself realize - anyone can recreate anything you try to hide/undo.

Frankly- in todays digital world - a fraudster, if they really want to - can easily access the data (elsewhere) that you are trying to hide.

In my personal humble opinion - whether or not you were successful in hiding such info (in Family Tree) - would have little impact on whether fraud was going to be committed.

Fraudsters already have much better sources already at hand - then whether or not a deceased (OR LIVING) persons data is available in FamilyTree.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

I believe that posting a deceased person's data online -- as long as it clearly includes the information that he is deceased -- can actually prevent fraud, by making it easier for people to know that any new activity attached to that person's identity must be fraudulent. (In my opinion, the U.S. government's decision to delay updates to the SSDI is seriously misguided: it gives identity thieves several years' grace period in which to operate, because banks and other institutions cannot easily check that the Social Security number being used is a deceased person's.)

Dennis J Yancey

Some good reading:

https://www.wnj.com/Publications/10-Steps-for-Avoiding-Identity-Theft-after-the-Dea

A van Helsdingen

According to this help article, FamilySearch does not accept requests to make deceased profiles confidential.

https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/deceased-people-in-my-family-tree-private-space

The article says profiles are marked confidential when "the ability for the public to view the information could harm the contributor". What this means in practice is that people born in or who lived in certain countries are automatically marked confidential.