If you mouse over to the right-hand side of this page you will see a link to the latest update to our master family tree. This update was several months in the making, and since earlier versions required a lot of manual hand coding in HTML, I was not in a big hurry to open that can of worms. Best to wait for the next big snow day. To make matters worse, my local ISP retired its free server space. So once the source files were deleted there was to be no turning back.
What finally greased my gears into action was an unexpected email I received from a distant relative. It seemed he was concerned that his family sheet could be used for targeted phishing attacks. If this were 1990 I would say that holds water, but this is 2021 and the amount of personal identifiers available on just the open source web is astounding and way above anything that could be harvested from a family tree. I'm afraid the cows left that barn many years ago.
In earlier versions of our on line tree I was careful to exclude the birth dates of living individuals. Now-a-days those are easily harvested from your local PTA or HOA directory. And if you want just one example of a very powerful association aggregator, check out Family Tree Now. It's amazing what you can find here on living individuals with just a little digging (although some associations, addresses and phone numbers are bogus or out of date). I even used this site to confirm some of my past addresses the last time I had to put in my paperwork for a security clearance.
Our current tree was published with the web page functionality built into the Roots Magic genealogy software I use for my day-to-day research. In early trials it seems to do the job and it looks like future updates will be much easier. But it will take me time to go back and fix broken family page links in prior posts. So please be patient.
You also will notice that this newer version no longer has entries for living individuals. The Roots Magic software does not allow for birth date exclusion, only living person exclusion. Hopefully this will allay future security fears you might have.
I rarely use open source trees posted on such sites as Ancestry.com. These are riddled with errors and wishful thinking. Most all of my entries come from trusted fellow researchers or census, birth/death certificates, deeds, family bibles and grave markers. But even those sources are never perfectly accurate. So if you come across an incorrect spelling, date or family association, please let me know. But also include your source for the correction. When conflicting dates or spellings are encountered I always opt for the public record first.
No comments:
Post a Comment