Ask HN: Is your information on genealogy sites? How do you remove it?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9894423

by burger_moon • 11 years ago

5 7 11 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I did a google search of myself today and found my name listed on a site called onegreatfamily.com on the first page of my results. It has information about my parents and sister listed.

I would like to request them to remove my name from their database or at least from their searchable index, but since they require a lot of personal information just to submit a contact form it seems like I would be then voluntarily submitting my information to them according to their privacy policy[1]. Their site is really low rate and shady and they don't have a very good privacy policy. It's very generic and doesn't cover much.

What is the best approach to having information removed from these genealogy sites?

[1] http://www.onegreatfamily.com/Help/Privacy.aspx

mindcrime• 11 years ago

You could do a whois on the domain name and find some contact info there.

ex:

    Registry Registrant ID: 
    Registrant Name: Z-Corp
    Registrant Organization: Z-Corp
    Registrant Street: 1371 West 1250 South
    Registrant City: Orem
    Registrant State/Province: UT
    Registrant Postal Code: 84058
    Registrant Country: US
    Registrant Phone: +1.8014910335

burger_moon3• 11 years ago

I did and found the CEO and his email address and an article written about him on mormonentrepreneur.net and an old home address and some more information. Z-Corp is just a shell that owns a handful of genealogy websites.

I suppose emailing him directly is one option now, but what do people do that don't know how to sleuth on the internet take care of this?

SiVal• 11 years ago

The LDS Church takes a very dim view of publishing genealogical information about living people. It is forbidden by church policy on any church-related site, many potential customers of a genealogy site are Mormon, and most of them know this policy, support it, and would take a VERY dim view of a website that intentionally violated it. I once consulted on an online genealogy system for the LDS Church, and being able to prevent this sort of privacy invasion was explicitly part of the spec as part of longtime, standing policy. As I very vaguely recall, the spec required a death date in the data for anything other than `(Living Person)` to be displayed (even the name was blocked), and in the absence of a death date, the data would not be displayed unless the birth date was more than a century earlier (which I think was later extended to more than a century, but I'm not sure.)

Unfortunately, the site you mention has no connection to the church, but if the CEO was interviewed on a site called "mormonentrepreneur.net", he might in fact be very receptive to an email that simply claimed that someone had posted personal genealogical information about living people, you and your family, on his site, that you are "sure his policies (like other legitimate genealogy websites) would not allow this", and you would like it removed.

You should at least start that way for the reasons I mentioned and for the fact that, like Reddit, these businesses mostly host huge piles of data contributed by non-staff members, and it is often too much data for their few staff members to have any hope of proactively moderating. You might need to be a squeaky wheel just because of the logistics.

I hope that just pointing out that these are indisputably living people will be enough, but it's possible they will require some proof of your identity, because these sites are the targets of lots of data disputes between family members who try to modify each other's data as well as plain ol' vandalism.

brudgers2• 11 years ago

For a person in the US, there is a good chance that the information was gleaned from public records such as vital statistics. If that is the case then it is available to someone else to publish even if one site takes it down. In addition, sites are under no obligation to take down information contained in public records.

Good luck.

burger_moon3• 11 years ago

Thank you. I did notice on ancestry.com they mention that some information is pulled from public records. I wouldn't be surprised if that is also abused by these sites as excuses to keep information up, but I will still attempt to get it taken down at least.

brudgers2• 11 years ago

Publishing public records isn't abuse. If a website takes such information down at an individual's request, it's a courtesy not an obligation.

Ask HN: Is your information on genealogy sites? How do you remove it?

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