Ancestry Magazine

Family historians can’t mask their identity online if they want to tap into the wealth of information available.

Genealogists approach the Internet in a schizophrenic manner. Their trusting, giving side wants to share their contact information with every potential cousin on the Internet in hopes of furthering their research. But their paranoid, been-burned-before side wants to protect themselves from spammers, fraudsters, and distant relatives asking for money.

Family historians must listen to both of these little voices in their head to balance their need for contact with their need for privacy.

Why Share?
Consider for a moment why we research our ancestry. Reasons abound: personal fulfillment, religious conviction, curiosity, understanding one’s place in history, membership in a lineage society, school project, family health considerations, meeting previously unknown family members, and simply being nosy about family relationships. The reasons are as diverse as the genealogists themselves.

Even if family historians were not motivated to meet new family members, they are still dependent on other people to conduct research. For instance, on any given visit to the library, chances are that you will ask questions of the librarian regarding the library’s holdings and how to access them. Your interest in genealogy will no doubt come out and it’s likely that you will share the particulars of your research with the librarian in order to assist the research process. Your use of the library would not be as effective if you did not share some of your previous research with the librarian assisting you. If you are a card holder at the library, the library probably has your name, address , and telephone number on file.

Considering that the librarian could now potentially violate your privacy with what he or she knows of your research and your contact information, did you make a mistake by involving the librarian in your research? Was the trade-off between more efficient use of the library and revealing something about yourself and your personal information worthwhile?

The same is true on the Internet. Researchers have to share their contact information if they expect anyone to contact them regarding their questions, answers, or other posts on genealogy mailing lists. Similarly, our genealogy webpages need to display what we know about our ancestors as well as how visitors can contact us. Your direct e-mail to fellow researchers needs to include your research interests and the best way to contact you. Researchers simply cannot be successful in genealogical research on the Internet if they refuse to share personal information.

What to Share?
Signing messages as “Fluff-N-Stuff” or “GenGal” may be cute in a chat room for teenagers, but genealogists need to know who they’re talking to. Would you introduce yourself at your local genealogical society’s meetings by your nickname, CB radio handle, or nom de plume? Please have the courtesy to give your name. We will certainly take you and your research more seriously if you do.

Including your e-mail address in your Internet communications is the most basic information you should provide to fellow researchers. It should be in the body of your e-mails (just in case the body of the message gets separated from its headers due to copying, forwarding, or printing). And you should share it with every post you make to a mailing list or message board. Similarly, your e-mail address should appear on every page of your genealogy website. Don’t forget to include your e-mail addr ess on your snail mail correspondence as well. You might get a reply to a traditionally posted letter faster via e-mail if you let your pen pals know that you also have an e-mail account.

The problem with relying on your e-mail address alone for your contact information is that e-mail addresses change very frequently. To ensure future contact with others who are interested in your research, you need to share something more permanent than your e-mail address.

In addition to an e-mail address, serious genealogists share their mailing address, perhaps even their phone number, or other permanent contact information with other researchers. Some researchers do not have e-mail or Internet connectivity. If someone with Internet access sees your research interests, prints out your information, and gives it to someone else who is interested in the same surnames but does not have e-mail, how is that fellow researcher supposed to contact you? What if your e-mail address changes? How will those who read your old messages in mailing list archives or on message boards reach you? Sharing e-mail is a good first step, but it is not sufficient to ensure future and ongoing contact.

While sharing contact information is important, it is obviously secondary to the research information we want to share. Sharing only your surnames of interest is not enough to stimulate good responses. Providing surnames, places where these ancestors lived, and dates of interest are critical to successful genealogical communication. You might be interested in the Smith surname, but if this is all you share with your correspondents, you will be forced to wade through a lot of non-related inquiries. If instead you tell others that you are researching the Smiths of Smithville from 1795 to 1833, you stand a much greater chance of receiving a specific and successful response.

Why Not Share?
Privacy is the number one reason cited by Internet users for attempting to stay anonymous and for not sharing contact information online. Most of us are not comfortable sharing our telephone numbers and postal addresses with strangers.

However, if your name, address, and phone number have ever appeared in a telephone directory over the past decade, this information is already publicly available on the Internet via one of numerous telephone directory websites (see Cyndi’s List — Finding People.) Have you ever bought, sold, or paid taxes on land? Your contact information is also likely to be on the Internet as a result. Do you think that giving out your phone number but not your snail mail address keeps your street address private? Go to Google.com and type in your personal phone number with area code first. If your name and street address do not come up, try a friend’s phone number instead. Using an already public example, entering “703 525 0050” will give you the name and address of the National Genealogical Society in Arlington, Virginia. Google is just one of many reverse lookup services that renders futile attempts to keep a snail mail address private. Even your birth date is probably out on the Internet (try anybirthday.com).

If you have managed to live unlisted until now, avoided sharing information with local, state or federal governments, and never provided your name, address, and telephone number to commercial entities, you probably do still have some privacy left to protect. Otherwise, the cat is already out of the bag to the world at large about who you are, when you were born, where you live, and how to reach you. This probably doesn’t provide much comfort regarding personal privacy—it’s not meant to. If you really need to retain some of your privacy, get a post office box and use it consistently when sha ring your personal information. Otherwise, you’ve probably already gone public even if you never intended to.

Some family historians do not care to share the results of their research. The reasoning is that since they spent so much time and effort on their ancestors, they don’t want strangers to simply lift their research off of a website, an e-mail, or another form of communication. Sharing basic genealogical information of names, relationships, and dates should be done without concern. It would be nice if no one in our community ever took someone else’s research and called it their own. Unfortunately, we do not all play by the same set of rules.

Family historians should share names, relationships, and dates freely but withhold source citations for this information when sharing research results publicly. Names, dates, and places shorn of their sources devalues genealogical information, so let the surname rustlers have them—they’re mythology without proper source citations anyway. Tell your correspondents that your sources are available upon request so you can have more control over who receives the proofs of your hard work.

What Not to Share
Sharing your real name, your e-mail address, and your surname interests are a bare minimum for any genealogical communication. The addition of permanent contact information and research interest locations and dates makes such communications complete. Now what should not be shared?

Do not share information about living persons such as name, birth date, mother’s maiden name, social security number, or contact information. People have the right to make their own decisions about whether they wish to share this information with the world. It is not our place to make this decision for them, even for the benefit of our research. Even though the people’s particulars may already be public as de scribed earlier, it is not proper to share their information without explicit permission. Sharing information only about dead persons is a good first step to protecting the privacy of others.

My own rule of thumb is to only share information from my research on those family members who are two generations from the oldest living generation. My great aunt is my oldest living relative so I restrict myself to sharing information on my great-great-grandparents’ (her grandparents) generation only. Making information public about my great-grandparents (her parents) would provide my great aunt’s maiden name. As this is often used as secondary identification for access to bank accounts and other purposes, it is not something I should share with the world.

Share and Share Alike
Family historians have to share. We can’t succeed in our research if we behave like solitary oysters, trying to keep our pearls to ourselves. If we don’t tell each other where we can find each other in the oyster bed, we’re not likely to make efficient progress in our research either.

Each of us has a personal balance of comfort between sharing our information and valuing our privacy. The advent of the Internet has affected that balance and we need to be realistic about what privacy we can legitimately expect to protect. We are much more “findable” now by more people than ever before. This doesn’t mean that we have to unduly expose our particulars to strangers, it just requires that each of us find the right balance between privacy and sharing.

Mark Howells hides under a rock at markhow@oz.net.