Don't people realise how much it hurts

[Nick29]

People who host family trees on their own websites which feature the details of living people are reckless in the extreme !

If someone did that to me, I would be on to the company which hosted the site and give them 24 hours to take the site down, or face legal action.  Proper genealogy sites never feature the details of living people.

[andycand]

People who host family trees on their own websites which feature the details of living people are reckless in the extreme !

If someone did that to me, I would be on to the company which hosted the site and give them 24 hours to take the site down, or face legal action.  Proper genealogy sites never feature the details of living people.

Hi Nick

Unless the information on the website is libellous or is covered by some sort of court supression order or is factually incorrect there is little that you could do. Including living people in an online tree is not illegal. Newspapers and other media publish information about living people all the time without asking permission.

Andy

[Nick29]

You will be amazed at the effect that a solicitor's letter can have 

[andycand]

You will be amazed at the effect that a solicitor's letter can have

Any company hosting websites would, or at least should, have their own solicitors who would quickly tell them that it was perfectly legal.

Andy

[Nick29]

LOL, you mean like this one, who don't allow any such thing ?   I don't know if you've ever run a web site, Andy, but I have run several, including internet forums and I can tell you that what web hosting companies' Terms and Conditions say, and what the law says are often poles apart.  On one forum that I used to run, I had to eventually ban a couple of people because I was getting warnings from the web hosting company, because although what they were doing was not strictly illegal, they were breaking my contract with the hosting company.

Added later.....

Here's part of the Terms and Conditions of one of the larger web hosting companies in the UK.....

The customer shall not :

send, transmit, make available, copy, retransmit, broadcast or publish (whether directly or indirectly) in whatever form any data, information or contractual rights, material or statement which infringes the Intellectual Property Rights or contractual or statutory rights of any person or legal entity or the laws or statutory regulations relating to defamation, contempt, blasphemy, infringement of privacy or personal data rights and any equivalent or related laws in any territory in which they are or may be accessed or made available;

[andycand]

Individual websites can, and do, make their own decisions about what they allow on their websites.

Certainly hosting companies do get concerned about the content of websites, particularly libel, and no doubt err on the side of caution but if you search the internet you will find many websites that have information about living people including many of the sites that we use in our research. For instance transcriptions of baptisms and marriages are on many sites, I have several entries on Ancestrys Australian Electoral Rolls that have my address, most blogs would mention living people, and of course social networks are full of references to living people.

Andy

   

[Joy Dean]

I agree with you about photos and recent generations.  It's odd, I hadn't really thought about it before, but I would be shocked if I found myself and my immediate family on someone's tree.  I don't know why I am being so sensitive.  Maybe it's that I think one ought to be going back in time from oneself; and that going back and sideways and then forward in time to someone else's family in the present, and putting it on a tree without permission, seems to be an invasion of privacy.

I am so sensitive that I removed my post here.

[Nick29]

Individual websites can, and do, make their own decisions about what they allow on their websites.

Certainly hosting companies do get concerned about the content of websites, particularly libel, and no doubt err on the side of caution but if you search the internet you will find many websites that have information about living people including many of the sites that we use in our research. For instance transcriptions of baptisms and marriages are on many sites, I have several entries on Ancestrys Australian Electoral Rolls that have my address, most blogs would mention living people, and of course social networks are full of references to living people.

Andy

   

Yes, of course I am in no doubt that I can find a lot of personal information about myself on Family History sites, but not all at once on a single page, and certainly not to people whose own identity has not been checked.  I'm fairly certain that if I saw a website which gave my DOB, place of birth, details of my father, and my mother's maiden name, I could get them to remove that data within 48 hours, especially when this is the sort of questions that banks and credit agencies ask.  The UK Data Protection Act 1998 is also pretty specific about the data which you are allowed to store in digital form, and how you are allowed to store it. 

[Guy Etchells]

People who host family trees on their own websites which feature the details of living people are reckless in the extreme !

If someone did that to me, I would be on to the company which hosted the site and give them 24 hours to take the site down, or face legal action.  Proper genealogy sites never feature the details of living people.

Exactly what legal action could you possibly take?
The Information Commissioner has stated it is perfectly acceptable to publish information about living people on one's own personal family history website.

It would be an offence for a Family History Society or other Commercial concern to publish such details but it is completely legal for individuals to do so.

I am totally opposed to the current craze started in the USA to censor information.
Our ancestors fought and died to protect our freedoms including freedom of free speech and I find it abhorrent that people try to prevent others exercising what is in fact a basic human right.

Obviously one would not publish personal details such as medical history or financial history etc., but dates of birth, marriage and death are public records and it is perfectly acceptable to publish such details.
Cheers
Guy