Genealogy Chat

I know this has been gone over before, and I thought I had it sussed. Last time I uploaded my tree, I was advised to tick the "hide living relatives" option, but to make myself deceased otherwise it would play havoc with access. So I gave myself a death date of 1999.

I assumed that would then be okay. But today I had contact from a new relative who enquired about my husband and was able to quote his full name. However, our daughters were not visible to him.

Can anyone advise what I have one wrong or what is going on here?

Margaret

I think he knew from some other source. With a bit of scrounging around, I was able to find some info, but not what every initial stood for,.

I'll pm my search, but I don't see that there's any real cracks in GR's system. One can search for your hubby on all trees and get multiple hits for his name, including your tree. However, a search on your tree gets no hits. I also get no hits on any middle names anywhere.

If you had opened your tree to someone before you decided to hide relatives then he/she will have the original information even though you have now changed it

I can't understand why you put details on a website then go to great lengths to try and hide them from view. If you have a problem with other people seeing certain names, then just leave them off altogether.

That is the only sure way of preserving their anonymity.

Have you entered your husband's birth date or year on your tree? If you have left this blank, then the GR system won't be able to calculate that he was born in the past 120 years, so will assume he's not living and won't hide him!

RichardIP - good point. I hadn't thought of that. However, it's not applicable here as Margaret's hubby does have a yob.

Quinsgran - another good point. I had access to a tree that I had seen in full, and recently the owner hid living rellies. I remembered the names and details of some entries, and this was how I was able to see the results of searches for these newly hidden people, both outside the tree (i.e., of all trees, giving hits), and within the tree (giving no hits).
However, I don't think this applies here - Margaret says it's a new contact.

Hi all

Yes, I know people can do the legwork themselves if need be, just trying to make it less obvious.

Hawkwind, I don't know how to "leave them off altogether". There are lots of people in the tree on my hard-drive who are living, and I don't want to remove them from my PC file (some have still to be researched further).

So if you have any tips as to how NOT to download them to GR, I would be grateful.

I've now hidden my hubby, but if others are still visible then I am concerned.

Margaret

Can you please tell me how to hide relatives on a tree. I cannot see this option anywhere or any instructions?

Can you please tell me how to hide relatives on a tree. I cannot see this option anywhere or any instructions?

Carol, click on my account at top of home page, then click on personal details, scroll down and there should be an option to hide living relatives.
Cath

I have now hidden living relatives, but when I first started I didn't know you could. Like most people I just leap straight in to the research.
People should think more about theirs and their relatives identity. In this day and age it is big business to steal peoples ID, especially for people trying to get a british passport. You should see the lengths they go to. A few bits of fake ID and away you go. It's up to the passport service to find the fake applications.
We should not make it any easier for them. If we want to put our own info online then thats our choice, but our rellies have no say in that.
I do not agree with ancestry public trees at all. I have had recent access to one and was dumfounded to find my childrens details on there. The person even has my husband ex-wife and her subsequent marriage to someone else.
I have been married 25 years to my husband this year so what relevance does she have. I have been with him since 1982 and she is not part of 'the family' anymore and neither is her husband.
please treat you personal ID as if it was a million pounds.

The only certain way to hide living relatives is not to add them to a public tree at all on any website. Even if the information is hidden sooner or later it will show up by indirect means possibly by searches.

A good question to ask oneself is why does anyone want to display information on a living relative at all? One should also remember that the consent of each living person is required before their information is displayed on a public tree.

The main reason that living relatives are added to public trees apart from genealogical information is to act as a physical link to deceased ancestors to enable a tree to be built. The simplest thing in the world is to given them all the same name of "Living Realtive" with no birthplace information other than a dot. Even birthyear information which is a required field can be made incorrect by 10-20 years.

Why go to all this trouble? To protect the ID of people who often do not know their details have been made public.

How simple is it to obtain family information about other people from a few details? It is very simple.

Often a new member will only add their own name, Dob and birthplace to get their tree started. If I see such a newly entered name on the Surname Summary Facility with a surname I am interest in, it is normally possible for me to work out in less than 5 minutes that persons complete family history going back generations even if they do not yet know this information themselves.

The moral of the story is to protect the ID's of living people whoes names you may innocently place on a tree. Also protect your own ID by diguising some of the information.

Michael

I solved my original problem from back in August, but can I add that the reason why living relatives are on my tree, albeit supposedly hidden, is because they are on the tree that I maintain as my "master" tree on my hard-drive. As I have hundreds of them (added long before I joined either Genes or Ancestry), it is nigh impossible to remove them from the trees that are online.

FMP has the option to "privatise" a file before uploading it, which I now do as an additional precaution.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Why would anyone put living relatives on an online tree? It's of no help in family research. Can any site guarantee that they will hide these living people. I think not. I am the only living person on my tree. I wouldn't dream of putting husband, children, grandchildren or sibling's names online.

Like I said, Margaret, they are there cos they are on my master tree. How do I remove 200 living individuals every time I upload my tree to a website? I suppose I should keep two trees - one minus living individuals. I will investigate how to do it.

I understand your dilemma, Madmeg. I don't upload my master tree onto Genes. I only have a skeleton of a tree on here so I enter the names manually one at a time. Occasionally I make contact with someone and realize I don't have all of their family on my tree here so I enter those names so that they can see how they fit in. A bit of a drag but then I guess there's no perfect solution.

Margaret, I haver over 3,000 people in my tree (and am not a name collector), and lots of them are living. I've taken every precaution known to me to hide living rellies and so far, I think it has worked.

So if you only have a skeleton tree, that must mean you have two trees. Please tell me how that works in practice.

Thank you so much for all your help!
carol