Genealogy Chat

another nudge

Suzanne

YOU have to it yourself.


As Lynski said ............

go into My Account,

then into My Personal Details


scroll down to Your Current Surname ...... make sure that is BLANK

scroll down to Your Birth Surname ..... and either leave it blank, or put something else in there (mine says "In Canada" :-D )

scroll down to the bottom, and click on Save





sylvia

Suzanne
You can go into My Account and change it to show only your board name whenever anyone clicks on your name.

CLAIRE
I HAVE just discovered that if you click on my name,my surname comes up?
i did not register in my maiden name,but i believe GR asks for it(its been 8yrs since i registered on here) ive sent a mail to them to ask them to remove it.

An oldie, but so useful IMO (in my opinion.)

My daughter was 14 & on one of these "teenage" sites when someone started chatting to her. Fortunately she's been warned about the dangers & was on her guard.

The way this person was talking wasn't right, the phrases used were not consistant with a teenage boy so she challenged him about his age. He was in his 40's

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/mid/7538836.stm

Police have warned young people about the dangers of online chatrooms after a teenage girl who went missing from Ceredigion was found in Belgium. Dyfed-Powys Police said the 15-year-old met a man online and went to meet him without her parents' consent, leading to a three-day hunt. A man, aged 26, was arrested in Belgium, where he is on police bail.

Police said the case highlighted the danger of chatting online, particularly on social networking sites. Police said teenagers should take great care contacting people they did not know. Det Supt Simon Powell said: "I would advise young persons who use social networking sites on the internet to be extremely careful when communicating with people they do not know.
I would encourage anyone who uses this type of site to take care on what personal information they give out and to consider carefully who they are chatting to.
Anyone with any concerns should discuss the matter with a trusted adult or report their concerns using the online reporting facility that is available on most sites."

I quite agree with comments already made...
Looking at this site today i have come accross names i recognise from distant relations and i am wondering if they are the persons they say they are.
I have been researching my tree for well over 20 years and i am very reluctant now to share info so sad really has that is what this hobby is about...

Nudged having just seen a lookup on a very small child

& if you are going to post on the boards, DELETE YOUR BIRTH SURNAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

nudge

A much needed nudge!

Just another boost for this one -- because I was recently quite taken aback by a thread here at GR in which the names and possible addresses of people someone was looking for, who had no idea they were being talked about in cyberspace like this, were laid out.

It isn't just fraud -- it's that you never know whom you're talking to, or who is reading what you write. I've been stalked on line, by someone who disagreed with me about a political issue.

First she pitched a fit and accused me of having hacked her computer and threatened to shoot her children (heh, one of the things I piss people off about in political discusisons is gun control -- I'm all for all of it!). Doing that in public exposed me to ill will on the part of anyone reading who also disagreed with me -- and the political issue in question is one that attracts violent crazy people to her side.

I had stupidly disclosed the city where I live. So then she made a point of talking about a holiday her family took to attend an event ... in my city, about 6 blocks from where I live.

Believe me, you don't want to live with that kind of anxiety. This woman was obviously a nutbar, and I didn't want to be in the same hemisphere as her. She continued to follow me around the net for a while, until I and someone else she had harassed got to work and actually figured out who *she* was -- she herself had left too many traces in cyberspace. We got her name, her place of employment, and her current husband's name. It took several attempts at persuading her that she was heading down the path of destruction if she kept it up -- that we *would* disclose this information publicly -- but the hints I dropped that only she would have understood finally worked, and she went on to new victims, I suppose.

You just can't know what unbalanced loon you might annoy in cyberspace. You don't want to give them access to you in real life. Let alone to your family members.

And you don't want to expose anyone else to whatever the consequences of someone learning their identity and personal info might be.

But you may want people to be able to contact you, and here's where you need an anonymous, net-based email account. Once again, I can't recommend Gmail too highly.

http://www.gmail.com

You can have as many accounts as you want. So you want at least one that is non-identifying, that you can use to give to strangers and to sign up for stuff on line, etc. You could be judyjudyjudy at gmail dot com, if your name was Helena Troy. If you wanted to establish more personal contact with someone later, you could give them a more personal email address.

A net-based email account does not disclose your ISP to email recipients. Your ISP often identifies where you are, often very precisely. By using a net-based account, you keep that info hidden.

So never ever give out your "home" email address to a stranger, or email someone you don't know from that address.

And another thing, while I'm here -- never ever "forward" emails that have someone else's personal info in them. If your cousin sends you a funny email that you just can't resist passing on, delete all of your cousin's info from it before forwarding.

And learn that the BCC function for email is your friend. If you are sending something to multiple people (who aren't already all part of a conversation), address it to yourself and "blind copy" it to all of the others. They don't need to have the names and email addresses of everybody else you're sending it to.

We're all still fairly new at this internet business, and sometimes it just doesn't occur to us that we're violating someone else's privacy or jeopardizing the security of our own personal info.

And never, ever talk about your kids by their personal details in the cyberworld!!

Hope you don't mind me asking, Sue, but did you find it hard to get established as an artist? I only ask as I'm starting out as a photographer and I'm finding it is much harder to get your name around than I expected it to be.

Currently doing the rounds of asking local places to take my business cards and sending enquiries out to all sorts of places.

Nudge

Try googling the name or names you use on here ............... several of us did this over on FR Connections a few weeks ago, and got some very interesting results!!


BTW ................ I googled our phone number after seeing the above message. It's apparently the same as a hotel in Malaysia.


isn't that interesting?!!!!!!!!!

Many people run businesses online with easily found websites and telephone and e-mail contact details. These details may also appear in various publications. I'm an artist and out of interest I did a Google search for myself. I am mentioned on 214 webpages. I think only one of them is someone with the same name.

I think it's wise to be a bit cautious who you give out personal details to but we can't all hide if we have to be available to customers.

Sue

Susan,

Many companies (or other folk) use random blocks of numbers so if your telephone number (ex-directory or not) is picked up within a block that's how a connection is made. Your replying confirms that you are a 'live' number.

This is bad because your number has been 'found' but not so bad in that it wasn't directly aimed at your number.

All systems have a down-side. Don't forget, you are on the Electoral Listings and we are pleased to be able to peruse those, just as any with criminal intent can.

As careful as we all may be with personal details, even Banks, Building and Insurance Societies lose them for us!

Be vigilant but don't have nightmares!

Hi Christine, I have noted two of them and by accident binned a couple more last week.

I get the occasional PM on here that are obviously from cranks. They use names I have never seen on here before and I am asked personal questions. Had one this morning!