Make only DIRECT LIVING LINE visible in new family groups feature-NOT ALL living relatives
Hello. I just heard about living relatives being able to be seen and shared within groups as a new feature that is going to be added to Family Search by the end of 2023. I am very concerned about this. I raised this issue in the chat and many people responded with a red exclamation point. I also emailed and received answers that did not address my concerns (telling me simply not to accept the invitation to the group does not solve the problem!), I called the 866 number and they weren't even aware of this. So far no one seems to have an answer to my question cut and pasted here:
Is there a way to opt out from ANY living information being shown? I'm trying to find out how do I stop this particular scenario from happening: Suppose a relative creates a group where he/she has MY living information, that of my living parents, or other relatives. Even if I personally don't join this group won't my information (and the other living relatives directly in my line) be visible to anyone who he/she has in her group since this information was on HIS/HER tree? This is a privacy issue.
Some people may feel comfortable sharing this info with other family members but I do not. LIVING PEOPLE SHOULD CONTINUE TO REMAIN PRIVATE IN FAMILY SEARCH-PERIOD!!!
A suggestion I am making to the developing team is to only allow a person's direct line to be visible when they create a family group. For example, when my cousin creates a family group and invites people, they should only be able to see HER direct family line such as her children, her parents, and so forth. The people she invites should NOT be able to see me, my living siblings, my living parents, my sisters' children, my living cousins on my mother's side, etc.... PLEASE can we work on this???
Thank you for helping me (and others) with this.
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There's an easy and iron-clad way to protect the privacy of all of those living relatives of yours: don't put their information online.
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The current Family Group feature allows you to accept or reject the invitation to become a member of the collaborative group - or if you want to be removed the group administrator can do so. The features currently include messaging and sharing temple family names. Essentially it's like knowing the email address of a group member (unless you allow View Relationship setting) - so a group mail/messaging feature. If you do not want to collaborate in this manner - I believe you were given the correct answer - don't join the group or request removal.
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With all due respect "genthusiast" and "Julia"-you are not reading my post correctly. Even if I do not put living people on my tree and even if I do not join my cousin's group (as you are stating), SHE has all these living people on her tree including me, my parents, etc and anyone that joins her group will then see ALL OF US once Family Search puts this new change in place. Asking EVERYONE in your family to remove ALL their living cards regarding my portion of the family is also an impossible task as I don't even know who in the extended family has added this information over the years. Once again I am going to state LIVING PEOPLE SHOULD CONTINUE TO REMAIN PRIVATE IN FAMILY SEARCH-PERIOD!!! Thank you.
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There are definitely issues with privacy with the living which is why it has taken so long for FamilySearch to even step into this realm (it has been hinted at for a few years now). They are trying to be cautious and work thru the possibilities but there are some good things to happen if people want to work together.
Think of it this way. It is like your cousins family getting together around the table (your not invited) and they share pictures and information about relatives. Does it hurt you, not really. Is it accurate or gossip, who knows? Will it ever go public to everyone, not until you are deceased and all the profiles of you get merged. It will be optional for those to share what they want from their private area (doesn't have to be everything) with those they choose to be part of their family group. It happens in person when families get together, now it will be in a computer form. I don't seem great harm unless you have a bad participant and you could choose not to include them or kick them out of group if they cause issues.
I am waiting to see how this finally works. It has probably more benefits than downfalls. They are still working on it. Hopefully they do some testing and learn how to make it work for the best.
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Ancestry is doing this already, and I understand there is a lot of pressure on FamilySearch to do the same.
I find what is happening on Ancestry to be very intrusive. There, a distant cousin has built a large tree including my immediate living family but not this cousin's own immediate living family.
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There is nothing to prevent a living person from using the knowledge/research they have - from adding living person's into their Private Living Space of FamilySearch Family Tree (how are you going to prevent it?). Whether those profiles are shared is a different matter - and yes could involve the consent of the living person those profiles represent.
I disagree with your emphatic rule - but only with modification of a couple of words:
Living people in Private Living Spaces (your private area to record living persons) - should remain private UNLESS documented permission to share (which is obviously given in Family Groups feature) has been accepted. PERIOD.
Why do you want to prevent the living from sharing when they desire to do so? I disagree that you and living family will be seen in the FamilySearch Family Tree without having given express permission for that to occur (View Relationship setting) - unless the cousin shares her screen/Living space without your permission (perhaps you do have a point there - but settings should override/obscure lines not granting permission). The Relatives at Rootstech feature is similar (if you don't agree to the settings - your information/relationship is not shown).
As mentioned by Cindy (above) - this is like living people gathering around the kitchen table (that they want to gather implies consent to share). In my view - this is like a family member/ancestor gathering names and publishing them in a family book of years ago. The only difference - which yes is significant - we have sophisticated hackers willing to destroy/manipulate all kinds of computer information ...
The problem - as you are pointing out - is that the FamilySearch Terms of Use put the oness upon each individual user to obtain the consent/permission to share each living person profile they might create - but don't have a place for storage of such documented permission (other than perhaps copying/pasting email/correspondence into Notes/Memories - which opens another can of worms...or the Family Groups feature - which clearly is opt-in only). The Terms of Use also include instruction for those wishing to report violations.
So it is best - in my current opinion - if sharing of Living Profiles is limited to those having granted such sharing permission in Family Groups (of which I believe you are only allowed 10 such groups currently). The current problem with sharing Memories to such a group - you only have Private or Public Memories to choose from - you cannot only share with a limited group (yes separate platforms have such capability but since FamilySearch is implementing Family Groups the next sharing step is logical).
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Thank you all for your comments. However, sitting around a table sharing private things is MUCH different than sharing them over the Internet regardless of whether you have chosen 10 or 100 people to share my information with! One person above mentions the hackers which is only a part of the problem. What about the "bad sheep" in our families? We don't like to talk about it, but it's out there-you know! I can see that most of those who are responding to me seem to have no problem with their living information being shared. And that's fine. That's why I suggested that the person creating the Family Group should only have their direct line visible for others in the Family Group. And all members in that family group should also only have their direct line visible. They should still be able to store other living info but it shouldn't be shared. I'm sorry you don't like my "emphatic rule" but "genthusiast" above offered an alternate to the wording which I wouldn't mind (Living people in Private Living Spaces (your private area to record living persons) - should remain private UNLESS documented permission to share (which is obviously given in Family Groups feature) has been accepted. PERIOD.). Perhaps the developers would consider that. I wouldn't have a problem with that then. I suppose we will all have to wait until Family Search rolls out this new feature and pray that our personal information being exposed doesn't lead to more serious consequences. I did call the 866 number yesterday and was told someone named Kayleen would call me back regarding this concern. It has been 24 hours and I have not received a call back so either I'm not getting one or Kayleen is still working on finding a solution/resolution to the concerns I have raised. I pray the latter is the case. I really appreciate all the collaboration here. I hope that Family Search will continue to respect the privacy of those that wish to remain private.
Thanks
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I understand & share your concerns, MC97.
I've entered a lot of information on living relatives in FamilySearch. A number of relatives that know this have expressed concerns over the years that the information might inadvertently be made public. I've been sensitive to this, but persuaded both myself and them that FamilySearch built really strong systems to prevent that from happening. Many users might be frustrated by those restraints, but they've been a selling point for me.
When the functionality to share living information becomes active, I won't use it. I certainly won't share data on living people with anyone unless those living people explicitly give permission to do so. I would not want others to do so with my family's information either.
However, I have relatives who have also entered a lot of living people into FamilySearch. And I don't expect they will be all that concerned about privacy issues. They will just be eager and excited to share their pools of living people with whomever in the family shows an interest.
I do understand though that sharing with close family is not the same as making the information public, so I'm going to withhold final judgment until the particulars of the roll-out are known. Hopefully they'll be sharing more information soon.
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I have kinda the same issue. I am the only one in my family that does family history/tree stuff. All of my parents in-law parents and all of their sisters & brothers (my aunt's & uncles and my husband's aunts and uncles) have passed...BUT I have all the cousins and cousins kids that are alive on the family search site. A few have passed and I note when they do...I change them from living to deceased which is all fine, but if I die, nobody will change me to dressed, but somebody might add me in the future and not realize that I am already in the tree with tons of memories...since you can't see live people, the living and the dead can't be merged....when will anybody see my stuff ? I am the only one that can mark MY added living people into deceased people. I guess I can tell somebody at my Family History Library "here is MY log in password, please go in and show my death date" but how about all of my cousins ( both in-law cousins and my blood cousins) ? Do they just float around since nobody but myself can mark the deceased? I haven't gotten a good answer from Utah or the people that I work with in our library. I am not LDS, but I am a consultant since 2017.
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@barbara kehoe, the fact that only you can see the profiles that you've entered for living people on FS is a strong reason to avoid entering them, unless you need a connector to get to the profiles of deceased people -- and such connectors do not need (and in my opinion, should not have) any personal details beyond whatever name or nickname you can identify them by.
Keep track of your living relatives offline, not on a website like FamilySearch.
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Whilst I agree with your position on entering details of the living, there is nothing to stop anyone completing a profile of me (or my living relatives), regardless of my attitude towards privacy and that this detail would only be seen (at present) within a private space.
I was really shocked to find a cousin had posted personal details of my family on a (now defunct) website, so whatever we choose to do won't stop others from putting such details online.
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the answer to your Question is a Big Fat No when you create a Group living people on Family Search Tree stay Private and they can not be shared with others .I guess this is a lesson for you me and others who post something they don't know the full story of and then chaos ensues I guess it'll be a messaging system of sorts nothing to do with sharing ones Tree and seeing all the living people ,
https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/what-are-family-groups
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@935168PS The help center article you posted is about the current status and function of Family Groups, not the features announced at RootsTech that will be added later this years. Those features involve the ability to create in the Family Group a shared tree of living people that only the people in the group can see and work on together. This Living Tree will connect in the main tree of deceased people just like our individual private spaces do. The actual details of how this will work have not been released and suspect won't be until the feature actually shows up.
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Just watched the Rootstech Vid and to be honest there was not a lot of information beyond being able to create a group / groups and add living relatives that ones other living relatives can see ,I am troubled with this as who's living relatives ie Are they only to be direct living relatives of that person / persons direct family ,? would not permission be needed for whoever one adds how would that happen . Then there are others who have amassed a great deal of living relatives on FS TREE Example Yesterday someone on a FB Group said they had 4,000 plus living relatives in FS Tree and wants to share them all ? This really is concerning as the only way they can have that many means they have gone sideways many times so have many cousins whom would be a number of times removed so not a first cousin they may know .... Are these Living Cousins actually a member on Family Search Tree or are they not members and so are oblivious to who has researched them and added their information to Family Search Tree ,how would FS manage this .... As members we can decline being a member of a Group ,,, fine .... but those who do not know they are a living person on someone else's Tree how will that be 'overseen'
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Everything about the Shared Private Space vs the current Individual Private Space is pretty much pure speculation.
"those who do not know they are a living person on someone else's Tree how will that be 'overseen'?" Probably the same way it is now. None of us have any idea how many dozens of copies of us exist in other users' private spaces or what information, correct or not, is in those private spaces. Adding one more private space that we also can't see (unless invited to join a particular Shared Private Space) isn't going to change that.
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Gordon I just asked some questions to Craig Miller about my concerns , he is the one in the Rootstech Vid ,have you watched it , posted below the bit about Living members and Groups is near the End
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If you look back at my post, you will see that I was the one that mentioned the information from RootsTech, so, yes, I have watched it. His presentation did not give many details on how this will actually work.
Details that we don't have yet are:
How is a Shared Private Space Created? Is it just the Individual Private Space of the person who creates the group? Is it a complete copy of the administrator's Individual Private Space? (In a presentation a couple of years ago Ron Tanner stated that Shared Private Spaces would increased duplicates not decrease them. But they may have found a way around that). Is it a partial copy of the administrator's Individual Private Space? Is it a brand new Private Space to which people will have to add new copies of any Living person they want to have in the Shared Private Space?
How do people invited to join the group add people from their Individual Private Space? Does their full set of Living get dumped in and then need to be merged appropriately? Or will they have the ability to transfer just some of their Living into the Shared Private Space? Or do they just get the ability to work in the Shared Private Space and don't actually add any of their Living to it?
What happens if an administrator decides to pick up his marbles and go home? Does the Shared Private Space just vanish? Does is revert to being the Individual Private Space of the administrator? Will it be required that another member of the group be designated the administrator and the Shared Living Space continue on without the original founder of the group?
What happens if someone that was invited to join the group leaves or is kicked out? Do they get to get a copy of everything in the Shared Private Space moved to their Individual Private Space with new ID numbers for everyone? Do they lose access to all the IDs and everything they contributed to the Shared Private Space?
I would assume these details, along with the privacy aspects, are part of the reason why this feature has taken so long to develop.
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I would be seriously worried how this feature fits in with the EU's data protection requirements (GDPR).
If someone enters personal details about my birth, personal circumstances, etc., without my knowledge, into a document on their PC, GDPR is fine with that - there is an exclusion for data held personally - no-one wanted legislation to forbid the compilation of Christmas Card lists, say.
I don't see that there is any difference if someone's Christmas Card list (flippant example) is entered into the current private space provided by FS. Only the enterer can see the data.
But if the enterer can invite others to see that information, without my permission? It's been said above that this is exactly the sort of thing that can happen between people now. Mmm. Yess. Sort of. But the difference is that this is now being created in a FamilySearch facility. How much will it still come under the exclusion for personal use? And could it be regarded as being for FamilySearch use? - i.e. not personal use at all. Especially if the end-game is that the information is eventually released for use by FamilySearch.
I would point out that family history societies found themselves very much having to deal with GDPR requirements - getting permission from the subjects to hold that data. So the data controller doesn't have to be a big organisation.
Could the groups to be considered as data controllers without "personal data" exceptions? Could FamilySearch be regarded as a data controller and therefore responsible for knowing what is held about me?
I really, really, hope that FS has taken advice from qualified personnel - not people like me, or people who simply say, "Well, isn't it like...?"
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