Question

I just saw a JABEZ OLMSTEAD WikiTree complete tree that shows my birthday and siblings!! We are living.

Comments

I'm sure that is a bit disconcerting. Are you the manager of the profiles of your siblings? If so, it is probable that you would be able to see that information and your own information but other WikiTreers and non-members would not be able to. P.S. If you will share the WikiTree ID of the Jabez Olmstead to whom you refer, it can be checked to make sure all information on living individuals is privatized.

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Hi Tamara,

Where did you see the private information displayed? As Nelda indicated, if you are on the Trusted List of Private and/or Unlisted profiles and you are logged in to WikiTree, you will be able to see private details from those profiles that non-TL members can not see. Your profile is red-lock Private, so we can't see any private details about you, nor can we see your family tree.

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I saw it on a general WEB search - it was a complete Wikitree on Jabez and included my birthday and my siblings. I wonder if someone I trusted might have printed it out?  I am going in an removing the exact birthdays and checking on the couple of people I had as trusted.  Now I will just put exact birthdays when people die!!

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FYI, I see no relatives of yours through your profile and the youngest Jabez Olmstead on wikitree was born in the 1840s.

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I have been busy working to make living people more private since I can google for a wikitree and see the living people's birthdates listed.  I just did it again to make sure this can happen.   I don't think Wikitree is aware of this loophole.  As I said, I am trying to be more aware of privacy now. I changed the birthdays to not be specific.

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Hi Tamara,

Were you logged out of WikiTree before viewing the WikiTree pages in question? If you are logged into WikiTree and access a WikiTree page (whether you reach the page via a link from a Google search or you connect to the WikiTree page via some other link/method), you will be able to see private details from privacy-locked profiles for which you are on the Trusted List.

Any non-Trusted List member (or a logged-out member) that reaches the same WikiTree page, whether via Google or some other method, will not be able to see private details from such a privacy-locked profile, since they are not on the Trusted List of the profile.

Let us know if you have questions about logging out of WikiTree.

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Rick, I think Tamara is saying that when she googles particular names, she sees in the google results dates of living people linked to their wikitree profiles  

Tamara, could you provide more info bout how you are using google to find this? What exactly are you entering in the search box ?

Edited to add: I just searched google using 

Site:wikitree.com +firstname +surname

of my living husband and his profile did not appear in the search results. His recently deceased father's profile did come up (same name) but with only the decade ranges. 

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Jilliaane -- thank you -- that is exactly what I was saying.  I was not logged into wikitree. APPEARS SOLVED - after I made sure that none of my living relatives allowed any public views of trees - I don't seem to be able to do this search that showed the full tree with the birth dates of living people.   IMPORTANT TO NOT ALLOW PUBLIC VIEWS OF LIVING PEOPLE.  Do your own searches outside of Wikitree to test.

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Tamara,

Glad you resolved the issue.

Here's the thing: it is already WikiTree policy to keep unlisted the profiles of living people who are not members of WikiTree. It is my understanding (and my experience from my single test above) that unlisted profiles will not show up in Google search results.

However, there are a TON of profiles that have no dates on them; wikitree has no way of knowing these are living people.  (There is a group of us called "Friday Date Night" who proactively seek out and research dateless profiles trying to fill in data.)

If you are a member of Wikitree, you cannot have an unlisted profile; but you can set your privacy high enough that Google search results should not display specific contents. And be cautious about what you place on your own profile if you're concerned about your privacy.

Answer 1

There's a process to go through to remove private info:  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Privacy_Conflicts#Take-Down_Requests

Answer 2

You might want to confirm what privacy locks these profiles have. If you and your sibling profiles have BLACK dots in the upper right hand corner of the profile, then they are UNLISTED which means noone else can see any details of them at all.

The only reason you can still see them (as previously mentioned) is most likely because you have been added to the trusted list.

If they have red dots then they are private, and noone can see any details at all, except that you obviously can.

If they have yellow or green dots then there is something wrong because those should not be showing up at all if your siblings are still living.

Answer 3

I think you may be seeing your private family tree here on WikiTree. You can see this content because you are on the trusted lists and you are logged in to WikiTree. If you were to log out and come back to WikiTree as an anonymous person, I believe that you would not see this content.