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stolen data

Inka Čekalová

September 07, 2016 02:32

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MyHeritage Smart Matches show that Martina Pokorná from MyHeritage has stolen my profile data including photos in the following profiles of deceased people which were public: Inka Freslová (1934), Ing Miroslav Fresl (1932), Růžena Freslová (1910), Barbora Freslová, Leopold Vašica (1869), Leopold Jan Vašica (1897). The number of profiles is probably higher, because Smart Matches don't show everything. This made me change some of my profiles from public to private. Mow I am not sure if my family members can still see these profiles. I also unticked the option in Managed profiles: Include in MyHeritageSuperSearch. I do not know if it helps.

I am quite unhappy about it, because I promise privacy to family members when I ask them for data or when I ask them to join my family tree. Can you help me with this problem and stop Martina Pokorná from stealing my photos and data? Is there a posibility to make my whole family tree private again? Or is it possible to hide the photos and details of the public profiles from the public and show for example only the name and the year of birth?

Thank you for your help

Inka Čekalová

6 comments

• 0
  
  Jeff, Geni Curator September 07, 2016 13:42

  Photos tagged to a public profile are publicly visible as far as I'm aware.  If you have a group photo, then I'd suggest cropping the person (like their face) for the profile photo.  It looks like you've taken the steps needed.  If you have close family that are deceased but want them to remain private, you can set them as private.  But be careful not to take this too far (too far back) or you will run into issues.  For example, you may be pushing it with Leopold Vašica.  It's tough to argue protection of his privacy or that of his family being born that long ago.  A rule we tend to operate by is that if the person was born 150 years ago, it should be public - meaning Curators will actively change profiles set as private to public if we see they were born, for example, in 1830.  I say this as sometimes people will try to privatize everything they can in their tree and this can be harmful and against the collaborative goals of this site.  Your family should be able to see them if they are within 4 generations (family group).  If you go beyond that, they may be locked out of it.  That applies to everyone in the shared tree, so again, be careful with how many generations you privatize.  The intent of the setting is not to make your tree or your profiles private - the intent is to protect the privacy of the family.  It should only take a generation or two to accomplish that goal.

  Genealogical data is not often private and it's not copyrightable (dates, locations), but biographies and pictures will fall under copyright.  So you are within your rights to contact Martina and ask her to remove those pictures.  I'd consider asking her to join your tree - get her working with you.  Often people researching their trees don't see copying information as stealing.  It's usually their family tree as well and they're super excited to get a picture to flush out their tree.

• 0
  
  Inka Čekalová September 07, 2016 14:59

  thank you for your answer. I cannot contact Martina as I do not know her, she is not in our family as far as I know and I do not know her e-mail. I tried to look at MyHeritage because in the past I created a small family tree there too. But I do not have a paid version, so I could not contact her either. And I found more photos and profiles copied from my Geni family tree among MyHeritage matches. If you could get her e-mail address for me, I would be grateful to you. Thank you

  Inka Čekalová

• -1
  
  Jeff, Geni Curator September 07, 2016 15:02

  They won't display the email of members.  The best that I could do is send her a message through MyHeritage describing your concerns.

• 0
  
  Inka Čekalová October 01, 2016 02:35

  Thank you for your advice. I managed to contact Martina thanks to my sister's relative who invited me to his paid family tree at MyHeritage. Martina has joined my family tree at Geni. I spoke to her, and she said she had no idea about Geni, she had never copied any pictures and it must have been MyHeritage who had added pictures to her data without her knowing it. I don't know if it is possible, but if Geni is linked to MyHeritage in such way, that MyHeritage copies pictures from "Geni world family tree" to matching family trees without letting either side know about it, it is shocking.

  Anyway, thank you for your help, you did the best you could to answer my request. :)

  Inka Čekalová

• -2
  
  Jeff, Geni Curator October 01, 2016 12:16

  MyHeritage is the parent company of Geni. They do offer cross site matching technology that can help in research, in which case the match would show the Geni profile had a picture, but no copying of data or pictures from one site to another is done automatically. MyHeritage does allow other family members to contribute, so perhaps another person in the family copied the photo.
• 0
  
  Thomas Kada May 27, 2020 17:29

  Hello, could anyone tell me how to contact Martin Pokorna? I'd like to ask her some questions.

   

  Greetings from Austria

   

  Tom