old family history surname lists -- beware

[Louisa]

In the past we were not so aware of the dangers of giving out information about ourselves or of having our identity stolen so we were more free when entering our names and addresses on family history society members lists and any 'looking for ancestor connections' lists.

About 8 years ago in 2001 I added my name, address and e-mail to quite a few of these lists and forgot about them.

Imagine my suprise all these years later to find all my information and everything I had posted in the roots web threads just listed on the www.123people.com site in the 'find people section'. They must trawl the internet looking for all infrmation and collating it for their database.

Just put in your own name and see what is on the web about you.

Now a days we are more web and identity savy but if you have put your details on an old family history members, genuki or rootsweb ancestor surname listing site in the past you can ask for your home address to be taken off.

The contact for some of the genuki lists is Hugh Winter : hugh@xtra.co.nz

As an example this list is for Derbyshire and there are lots more lists on there
https://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mwi/derbyshire.txt

I think the moral is to think before we post our family trees or any other personal information on the web as not everyone has good intentions. Being older and a naturally trusting person I sometimes find this fact harder to deal with in this modern day world.

Louisa

 

[ColinB]

The site uses search engines, it's the same as the results you would get using Google. I've just entered 4 searches using my name, my amateur radio call sign and my e-mail address and my web site address it brought up pages of them.
It reminds people that anything you publish to the web, (including on here) is accessable by other, take care what you say or do

Colin

 

[BernardR]

123 will remove your info if you ask them to.

 

[Helen G]

Oh My G..... how scary is that! Fortunately the info on me mainly relates to the dark side of my life as a Morris Dancer! However, I pity my namesake who is a pharmacist. Not only does she often get my work emails (and has been doing for years!) info on her crops up frequently on 123people.

Helen

 

[Arkrite]

"Morris Dancing ? How verrye interesting. Put that in the report for Uncle Heinrich, Von Smallhousen"
"Yes Herr Flick"

Its terrifying thinking about what agencies legally know about you. With these massive data bases the Government and control freaks are building on us all it really is naive to think they won't be hacked.Retailers have some of the most comprehensive information if you use a loyalty card.They even know what toilet paper you use and how many bottles of sherry you put away. I cheat, I use my mrs card which has a totally different name.
How long before the government supercomputer plugs into the Co-Op computer and I get a letter from the NHS saying that I buy too much whiskey and not enough wholemeal bread which means I will not be seen by my GP.
Yeah Scary, but I do suffer from paranoia and those nice people at Westminster would not do that...WOULD THEY ?

 

[Luckyjo]

Louisa, How right you are. I am shocked at the amount of info there is on me on the internet, thank goodness I have a new email address. Seriously a word of warning to you all. I have always been so generous with my genealogy research,wanting to share learn and simply gather info on my ancestors. The past couple of years things have changed. A lot of mean people are out there just to scavenge your hard work and save themselves money,giving you nothing in return. I recently sent a lady my full paternal tree after she promised to do the same...needless to say I never heard back from her and found my tree on Ancestry and friends reunited with this lady claiming it as all her own work. I was mortified when I also noted she had all my siblings and nephews and nieces on it as well. After a few emails back and forth I managed to get her to delete all the living members, but thats all she did do. Others have received copies of certificates from me with not so much as a thank you. So my advise to you all is only email the barest information requested first off, then wait and see if they send you something in return...:angry2:
There are of course some really nice researchers out there too

 

[fatfingers]

What worries me is that banks and credit card companies etc. always want to use your mothers maiden name as a password, and its easy to find it on these sites.

Theres that many kids with unmarried mothers round here these days, I wonder what they will do in the future.

 

[Phoebe]

What worries me is that banks and credit card companies etc. always want to use your mothers maiden name as a password, and its easy to find it on these sites.

You don't have to give them the real name though - just use a random one. (But make sure you remember it!)