My family tree has been displayed and reachable from Google Search without my authorization

Hi. I configure my account with maximum privacy. I didn't want to have my data shown online by others.

Then i noticed that in google search all my family names and history was reachable from search names.

By default some profiles have been public and that should not happen because i trusted that if my profile was strictly and completely private, there should no public default for any new person i add to the family tree.

I knew this was going to happen, this is why i'm now deleting all my info and shutting my account down.

Geni is a great websited but that glitch is too dangerous for me so i cannot keep any more data online.

Even if it gets fixed now, or i set person by person as a private info, with this kind of nonsense there is too much risk that my family info will again be displayed online without my authorization.

Thanks anyways for your service.

Regards.

Jeff, Geni Curator June 16, 2015 01:03

If the account is a Geni member, like yourself, then the name is indexed by Google, but no other information is presented based on your privacy settings. You can disable this in your permissions by unchecking the option "Let the public search for me (profile privacy settings apply)". http://www.geni.com/account_settings/permissions

Living persons, non-members, are private and are not indexed by Google. Deceased default to public, but can be set to private (though don't go crazy - it's to protect privacy not people 100 years dead). Do know that a common mistake is for someone to search their name in Google, click the link and think all their information is public, forgetting that they're logged into Geni and would of course see everything.

To close, you can have yourself and your family members private - you just didn't have the proper settings.

My family tree has been displayed and reachable from Google Search without my authorization

1 comment