A friend sent me the following. It contains some useful thoughts about
the web pages we may post, especially the family tree pages.
==============
I think we all need to be more careful about what we give out on living
family. There was an article in US NEWS & WORLD REPORT recently
regarding
crime and how easy it is to get the info from home-web pages, etc.
Someone
sent it out on another list I subscribe to. I will copy it here for you
all
to read.
U.S. News and World Report
News You Can Use 5/11/98
ON MONEY
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 résumés. Sure, there's no harm in posting photographs
of
Morris or Fido. And only the foolish post a Social Security number on a
Web
site. 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 with 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.
Take a bite out of credit crimes
Tip: Identity thieves like to rifle through mailboxes for preapproved
credit
card and loan solicitations, fill them out, and start using other
people's
credit. A 1997 amendment to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (the law that
governs credit bureaus) required credit bureaus to establish toll-free
"opt
out" lines that consumers can call to remove their names from those
mailing
lists. To keep your mailbox free of such identity thief temptations,
call
any of the three largest credit bureaus:
Equifax
(800) 556-4711
Experian
(800) 353-0809
Trans Union
(800) 680-7293