No real privacy for living relatives of the deceased
I have been confused for a long time as to the way privacy for the living is handled in Family Tree. Fine that we can't see the profiles of the living, except in our private spaces, but there is so much to be seen about them in the profiles of their deceased spouses, siblings, parents, etc.
Take one profile that I was checking out yesterday. The individual was born in 1944. Personally, I would not have even added him to FT, deceased or living. But another user had done so - without even the birth year, let alone any evidence of death - nothing attached other than a name and being placed under his parents. After I had found and added more details (including dates of birth and death) a record hint appeared for his marriage - showing year of marriage and his wife's name. So, I can quite easily identify what appears to be a person who is still alive and this important detail about them.
Sure, I agree that this detail is public (as, in the U.S., is lots of detail of the living - found in 1940 & 1950 census records,etc.), but what I continue not to understand is why we can't see details on a living person's profile that we can easily find (by way of sources and biographical notes) against the profiles of their close relatives.
What really are FamilySearch's ideas on the concept of privacy for the living?
Answers
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Personally, I don't add my known living relatives as I build the collaborative tree. I have myself, of course, as the starting point but not my living siblings/cousins. And, when I find that someone had added a member of my family circle that I know is living, I submit a request to make that profile private. It's what I can do.
I agree it's concerning.
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Thank you for response. I don't add any living or recently deceased persons, either. But the point I am making is that doing this does not prevent me (you, or others) from adding the detail I would have inputted on such IDs to that of a parent, or other deceased person.
Perhaps the current situation of IDs of the living being hidden from everyone, bar the user who created them, is a way of FamilySearch showing it is complying with privacy laws of the U.S. and other countries. Otherwise, there is nothing stopping us from recording full biographical notes of, say, our living parents and their siblings in notes attached to our deceased grandparents.
Some years ago, there was advice given that the existence of living children should not be mentioned in such a way. However, as long as names of the living are not redacted (as they are in the 1939 National Register, here in the U.K.), census and obituaries sources, etc. make hiding that detail rather pointless.
So my question is, why hide IDs of the living (after all, they could still all be designated read-only) when the information that would be seen can be seen elsewhere regardless - in FamilySearch and in other public records?
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I do make and work on profiles of recently deceased persons, including children who predecease their parents, but I try to obscure as much as possible the details pertaining to living persons. I don't ever upload obituaries, and I link to them only reluctantly. That is the best I can do here, given the rules of engagement.
Many US obituaries and Find A Grave memorials are astoundingly detailed. With obituaries, I think it is safe to say that someone very close to the deceased person wanted that much information made public. With Find A Grave memorials, however, I know often the details are not authorized by the immediate family.
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Here in the UK we have to wait 100 years for our census to be released. I can order official death certificates of quite recent deaths, eg my sister. Records in archives which may contain people who are still alive are 'closed' until a time when they would be expected to have died.
A few days ago I was watching a railway travelogue programme by a popular presenter who used to be a Member of Parliament. To check his age, I looked at Wikipedia, I also noticed a middle name of his mother which has occurred in my area so went to Family Search. Unfortunately no information about the mother, I wasn't interested in the father, they are both deceased. Then I noticed their son, the man on TV, who was marked 'deceased' with no information. I checked on all our media outlets and there was no report of his death but he had published something very recently. I submitted my findings with evidence to Family Search and their response was very swift. The man is now recorded as alive and therefore now private. His entry had been in Spanish, his father had been Spanish, and he was under his Spanish name of several parts. We know him by a normal 2 name. Why he had been marked deceased ????
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Why he had been marked deceased ????
There are many reasons for this error, all on the part of FamilySearch Family Tree contributors not FamilySearch staff. Thank you for taking action to correct the error.
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I was not implying that Family Search staff were at fault. I believe everything had been entered by someone in Spain, everything was in Spanish. I believe that the father was of some celebrity in Spain, as a dissident journalist who had to flee Spain and came to the UK, married well and had a family. The 'deceased' son had been entered by his Spanish name. To me and everyone else in the UK he is simply Michael Portillo rather than the Spanish: Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo Blyth. That actually raises another question, could failure to find someone occasionally because they were in/ moved to a country with different naming traditions?
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I mentioned errors are introduced by contributors, not staff, not to assign fault to anyone but so you understand no one except the contributor in question knows why they did what they did.
could failure to find someone occasionally because they were in/ moved to a country with different naming traditions?
Yes. That is a very common obstacle.
Your Michael Portillo would likely be known in Spain as Michael Portillo. In Spanish speaking countries it is customary to have a formal long name composed of the parents' surnames, and a much shorter name for daily use. The same is true in parts of Germany (and among Catholics worldwide) where middle names (often names of saints) are added during infant baptisms, and in Scotland where children are given multiple middle names.
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It sure would be showing great reponsibility, to warn everyone about posting information on living relatives. I was just involved in a dispute, in court, over how an individual obtained certain information and the REPLY WAs from the internet specificaliy, genealogical websites, funeral homes and newspapers who post obituaries, for recently deceased persons. They glean every drop of info and turn it into SCAMS. Such as widow, or family member, like, if they owned Real Estate, an antique, or anything of value. I could not believe how much information this person had on one of my LIVING relatives. That person went to a local funeral home, acting like they were part of her husband's family, got one of the little sheets, they hand out, and went home to his computer, and in less than two hours had over fifty sheets of information. This all happened about two years ago, and just came to trial around the first of this year. I hate to think what could have happened if no one had noticed about inquiries in to his real estate holdings.
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