Privacy rules

[Zaphod99]

Who makes them? I've never understood why we are discouraged from mentioning living people, on trees, for example.

Until quite recently we had phone books, listing living people and even where they lived.

My question was prompted by this BBC story today about someone finding a bundle of letters, and trying to find the probably living owner.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2093x3npjo

Zaph

[AntonyMMM]

The general rules ( in the UK) would be governed by GDPR legislation ..the General Data Protection Regulations, which sets rules about data storage & privacy but doesn't really apply to things like just naming a living person on a website ( people do that all the time in other contexts than genealogy).

However websites & forums are free to make their own rules, which generally go far further than is legally necessary just to be on the safe side.

[LH]

Hi

Can I join on this, having personal experience.  Its far too common now for the odd individual to build what is effectively a family tree for someone online, without realising the consequences of ‘naming and shaming’ individuals, without realising what they are doing.

I’ve across this on five occasions.  In one case, there had been a minor long-buried dispute 70 years earlier that rose again to the surface decades later and split two 90+ year old brothers and their families, who never spoke or met afterwards.   So sad.

We all need to think before committing details of other people family names online.

Just my view…..

Regards

[Andrew Tarr]

There are frequent tales of GDPR becoming a legal screen to avoid the remote possibility of some litigious person or body causing difficulty.  Today there are so many agencies offering to do that, sometimes for no-win, no-fee.  Times have changed, largely because of the internet.

[Top-of-the-hill]

  I may have a bit of a thing about privacy, but I would be very put out to find myself on a public tree. I have a feeling I probably am out there somewhere, dating back to more innocent times before the days of so much internet sharing.