I am forwarding the message below from the MS list as I think it is something
we should all be aware of. It is something of great interest to me at this time
as I have had my family and my own privacy compromised.
Not long ago I found a webpage with information that had been copied from my
private research. Back in the mid 1980s, I was collecting everything I could
find to put together a book on the Ashley, Day, Cavin and Perry families of
Wilkinson county, MS. When I bought my first computer I had put together
"books"
on each family line.
Foolishly, I sent copies of all my research to anyone I could find also working
on these lines. Even people I have never met.
I printed out copies of everything I had, including all living relatives,[Aunts,
uncles, cousins, my children, etc.., never dreaming it would be misused.
This web page contained relatives I had been able to trace, through years of
going to MS, interviewing people and reading court records. It also included my
living relatives, even giving my own maiden name, which I have never used,
having been raised by foster parents.
I asked to have it removed, it was and put back up again at a URL. I demanded
it be taken off at once and it was but I have no idea if it is off or has
traveled to another location.
My Aunt is very upset to know someone would put her name on the web. This is a
name the person posting it could not possibly have known except from my
stupidity of sharing my files. Her full name is one that not even her closest
friends would know, but there it was, on the Internet.
I am interested in sorting out the family lines, helping others with their
research, etc...., but I never intended, at any time, to give away all my years
of research to show up on some one else's webpage.
The letter below explains the dangers of putting living peoples names on the
inter-net.
Virginia Ewing vewing(a)ktc.com
listowner: Gober, Perry
search the mailing list archives at
http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl
-----Original Message-----
From: BJC <bjc(a)nh.ultranet.com>
To: MISSISSIPPI-L(a)rootsweb.com <MISSISSIPPI-L(a)rootsweb.com>
Date: Tuesday, October 13, 1998 4:51 PM
Subject: [MISSISSIPPI-L] IMPORTANT INFO
This came via another list and thought it is good info for all. A
reminder is to never put info about living relatives on a homepage.
Even gedcoms have a way to keep living relatives private.
News You Can Use 5/11/98, US News and World Report
BY MARGARET MANNIX
Home-page snoops
Does your family have a home page on the Internet? If so, you might
want to reconsider how much personal information you post online. Con
artists who steal others' identities, get credit in their names, then leave
innocent people with a mountain of debt to fight and ruined credit to clean up
are discovering the charms of the Net.
Old-fashioned techniques like wading through Dumpsters for discarded
credit-card receipts take time. These days, a savvy thief can hack into an
Internet service provider's subscriber list and lift credit-card numbers by the
thousands. Databases full of sensitive information have been inadvertently
left open in cyberspace. And some online outfits peddle sensitive information
without regard to privacy, despite Federal Trade Commission scrutiny last year
that encouraged many to limit how they sell services like looking up Social
Security numbers.
Meanwhile, thousands of netizens are unknowingly making it easier for
thieves to steal their identities by posting individual home pages, family
genealogies, and r=E9sum=E9s. Sure, there's no harm in posting
photographs of Morris or Fido. And only the foolish post a Social Security
number on a Website. But many pages are packed with the sort of details identity
thieves crave: full names, birth dates, birthplaces, addresses, occupations,
degrees, phone numbers. With the click of a mouse, a thief has a personal
dossier at his fingertips.
Think about it. A name, birth date, and birthplace will get you a birth
certificate, and a driver's license is not far behind. "The driver's
license,
unfortunately, has become a de facto ID," says Beth Givens, director
of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego. It's the key to all sorts of
financial services, and it propels a thief closer to the magic number:=the
Social Security number.
Mom's maiden name. Some family tree tracers place details like a
mother's maiden name online. That's often a common password for credit
cards and bank accounts. Revealing such personal details, says Ed Howard,
executive director of the Center for Law in the Public Interest in Los Angeles,
is "privacy suicide."
As Howard points out, the Internet isn't a toy. Your home page may
have hooked you up wi th a long-lost friend or relative, but it can also put you
at risk.
Identity-theft victims suffer the aftermath of the criminal's spending sprees
for years in the form of calls from collection agencies, ruined credit=
even mistaken arrest.
While the Internet is a wonderful tool for genealogists (it has revolutionized
family research), think again before jeopardizing the privacy of your relatives
by putting intimate details up on the Web. "If a family member is going to put
up the genealogy, I think they should notify all the living members of that
family tree," says Givens--who would prefer her family tree in
book form.
You'll never have complete control over your personal information, so you'll
never be immune to fraud. But why make it easy for someone to impersonate you?
If you wouldn't post your background on your local grocery store's
bulletin board, don't put it on the Internet. "It's the world's bulletin
board,"
says Carole Lane, author of Naked in Cyberspace: How to Find
Personal Information Online (Pemberton Press, 1997, $29.95). And con
artists are checking it out.
Clare L. Sallee County Coordinator for Rootsweb's Lowndes County,
Mississippi