Why is someone adding me as manager to multiple profiles (70 today alone) without permission?

Question

Have been added to many profiles as manager without my consent or knowledge. Hard to resolve/remove hundreds!!

Comments

Welcome to G2G, Kelly. Sorry that a problem like this has brought you here.

In case you haven't seen it, on the page

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:TrustedListChanges

there is a link to a tool which may help "to remove yourself from Trusted Lists that you've been added to just recently".

Answer 1

That's very odd. Are you previously familiar with the profiles you are being added to? Can you identify who is doing this from the change log? If you need help, provide a link or ID number for one of the impacted profiles and I'll see what I can figure out for you.

Comments

Yes, his name was listed for each profile he "made me" profile manager of in my watchlist activity received in today's email. I often delete those emails, and suspect this person has done this before - there seem to be hundreds of unwanted management roles. I just emailed him, asking why/how he has done this. People should NEVER be made managers unless they request or are asked if they want that role!! Some I am related to, the majority I have no clue who they are/were. Very upsetting - wondered why there was a recent uptick in permission & merge requests when I had no idea who these people "in my tree" were!! I may have to delete all of my hard work on this site if I can't remove myself as manager of too many unknowns - I tried with a large list, and apparently if you're the sole manager they will NOT remove you.

---

It is always best if you can resolve this problem on your own. Reaching out to him by email was a good idea. However, if you cannot resolve the issue to your satisfaction, please reach out to a WikiTree leader and we can help you get things back on track.

You should be able to delete yourself from any profiles you wish, even if you are the sole manager, as long as the individual is deceased. If you are the sole manager for a living person, you cannot delete yourself. However, if you reach out to a leader we can help you resolve this.

Sometimes it's very difficult to understand another person's way of thinking. Remember that the WikiTree Honor Code asks us to always assume good intentions. Perhaps he (wrongly) believes he is doing you some sort of favor. Maybe all it will take to resolve the issue is to ask him to stop with a brief explanation as to why.  That may be idealistic thinking, but let's see what happens.

Please keep us posted on what happens, and again, please don't hesitate to reach out if you need direct assistance.

Answer 2

The first explanation which comes to my mind is that the person who added you made it unwillingly. The bulk management of the Trusted List can be tricky to understand, and the person might have made some sort of wrong action, without even being aware of it.

It might as well be a bug. I suggest you contact the technical team with, as David suggests, precise examples of such profiles, so they can look at the profile history or the server logs to see is something went wrong.

As was said in a similar previous case, noboby can add you to the Trusted List or as PM if they had not been in contact with you before, because they need your email address to begin with.