One of the persons on my family tree wrote to me today and reported that her immediate family has been the victim of identity theft and that the police have told her that the theft arose from her participation on this family tree. She has asked me for help and I have no idea what to tell her.
Please advise.
Richard Narva
Richard, the details for any person's family and their information is private, unless they specifically make their own information public. Living profiles are private. So it seems unlikely the cause of the identity thief unless it was a member of their family, in which case, they would already know such info. What basis do the police have for making such a conclusion? I guess one thing they could do is reduce the size of their family group to exclude, 2nd or 3rd cousins. https://www.geni.com/account_settings/family
Make sure their privacy and permissions are set to reduce any unintentional leakage. https://www.geni.com/account_settings/profile_privacy https://www.geni.com/account_settings/permissions/
But if you want to test, log out and then see how much information you can find on them when not logged into Geni as a family member.
Oh, if you know the name of the person that stole their identity, we can look up their account and file a misconduct complaint. In addition, they could block him from seeing any of their profiles (if he is a close family member) if Geni doesn't disable the account.
