I have get to know that developers are nowadays able to edit profiles in masses using API that Geni provides. As far as I understand use of the API to mass update the profiles is against Genis Privacy Policy which states clearly:
Who can edit (Public) profiles?
Your Collaborators, Your Family Group, Geni Curators, Geni Employees
https://www.geni.com/company/privacy
Bots that are able to run mass updates using API doesn't belong to any of these four groups.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We've sent you a personal reply, however for others seeing this there are three issues at hand:
Thank you for you response. This problem seems to be bigger and present in both web UI and API.
Yesterday I picked some random profile, which happened to be my "first cousin 6 times removed's wife's fifth great niece's husband's father." I was not the profile managers (which happened to be one of Geni Curators) Collaborator, I was not on his Family Group, I am not Geni Curator nor Geni Employee. I was able to edit that public profile, which should be not allowed and is against your privacy policy. To edit the profile there used to be collaboration request which is how it's supposed to be.
I wonder how many of family researchers would want to work on the platform that allows everyone to edit every public profile? What about data reliability? It's just the matter of time before someone exploits this vulnerability.
Fix for this issue is not to change the privacy page.
Note what you wrote yourself about the profile you had access to: "public profile". Public is public and privacy rules does not apply.
First of all: even if the displayed relationship does not show that the profile is within your family group giving you full access it might be within your family-group anyhow through another path.
If you collaborate with one of the managers you have full access to edit, - that is the main purpose with collaboration. If not, being a Pro user you have access to edit the fields that is under revision control and reverted.
You also have full access to edit if the profile is added to a collaboration project where you are given access as a member. I see that you are a member of many such projects.
The only restriction on public profiles is if the profile is a Master Profile where a curator can lock fields, relationships or the full profile.
If you want to restrict your own edit access you can reduce your family group range in your account settings, stop collaboration with others and remove yourself from collaboration projects. That does however not restrict others access.
Read more about the world tree: https://www.geni.com/worldfamilytree/learn-more
"Public is public and privacy rules does not apply." Where does Geni states this? Link you provided didn't say anything about everyone being able to edit everyones public profiles. Instead Genis promise for privacy states clearly that:
Who can edit (public) profiles?
Your Collaborators
Your Family Group
Geni Curators
Geni Employees
Profile I edited didn't belong to any of the projects that I belong. So thats no excuse. Quality of the tree is compromised.
Think about Geni as a Wikipedia for genealogy where everyone can contribute with some limitations. The access rules in Geni does work as supposed to, but without any examples from you I cannot tell why you have access.
As I said above: If you dislike that you have edit access you can restrict yourself. If that is not enough just close your account and leave Geni.
Don't take it personally. This is a security issue not a dislike issue. I don't want that some random user is able to edit profiles that I have set up, without reviewing the changes. Quality of the tree is compromised and not informed to users properly if this is by design.
The main purpose of Geni is collaboration and edit access to public profiles is one of them, dislike it or not.
Are you adding sources to your profiles? I have never seen anyone arguing for changes on values that is sourced. If not - they might have sources you don't or simply they are sure they have better values.
In any case of disputes: Take a discussion.
Introducing an approve to edited fields would like Wikipedia just make the site to stop up. There are millions of users in Geni and million of changes every day. It is better to, like Wikipedia, having a way to revert the changes and discuss if there are conflicts.