At 08:48 AM 5/19/00 -0700, Boyle, Alan wrote:
>this is a problem that's been talked about in genealogical circles over the
>past year or two (at least as far as i'm aware, as a member of the council
>of genealogy columnists ... no joke!)
It was also mentioned in one of the recent privacy scare articles in the
popular press. The author of that piece just threw the "mother's maiden
name" threat into a list of bits of information that could be gathered from
different sources. He didn't explore it in depth.
>generally speaking, it's no longer considered a good idea to post
>information about living people in these family trees (and especially
>without their permission!) ... nor, imho, is it any longer a good idea to
>use maiden names as passwords. whenever you have a situation where people
All the modern genealogy software lets you exclude all information (except
the name) of living people from an output report or export file. They
usually define living people as people with no death dates who were born
after some user-configurable date (say 1900). This is to cover the fact
that they want to automate the process but you often won't have death dates
for all your ancestors.
>family tree). should i be legally liable somehow if i revealed enough
>information about him for someone to cause him injury or damage? does intent
>play a role in that liability? does it matter if i revealed it over the web
>or by sending a printed copy of the family tree to cousin X ... who happened
>to be an adept cybercriminal? do existing laws cover this scenario?
No real duty of confidentiality. I don't know what a court would find. I
always sanitize the info on living members of my family trees in any case.
DCF
----
It's genetic. Note on the 1871 Canadian census entry for my 3rd great
grandfather Josiah Burr Plumb:
"Obstructed here by Party refusing any convenience (visits?) upon Veranda
Ordering Enumerator out."
