Please see our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service for official legal details. The following is only a guide.
WikiTree has a unique public-private balance.
On protected profiles almost all information is kept private and accessible only to the Trusted List.
Profiles for all living people and non-living people with a living nuclear family member (parent, sibling, spouse, or child) are protected.
In this age of privacy concerns some people might say that no information about people should be public. WikiTree could be a tool for families only. Many genealogy sites work like this.
We believe this would be a great loss.
First, when you go back more than a few generations you start to share ancestors with lots of people. There are people out there who know things about your great-great-grandparents that your family doesn't know.
Second, family history is history. As Emerson said, "All history is biography." The stories of humanity — everyone's stories — need to be recorded and preserved.
WikiTree is designed to enable people to share and collaborate. For this we need a careful public-private balance.
Some family tree sites are entirely open. Anyone can see anything. We believe this is a mistake.
Everyone has things they'd like to share with trusted family members but not strangers. Even little facts such as your mother's maiden name and the street you grew up on could be used by identity thieves.
A person is unprotected if they are non-living and they have no living parents, siblings, spouses, or children.
For example, your great-grandparents would be unprotected if you have no living grandparents or great aunts or uncles.
Only unprotected information will make it into the search engines. Watch for yellow icons to see what is unprotected.
Someday in the distant future, when you are gone and you have no living nuclear family members, your full story will be available to history.
We never sell e-mail addresses or any other personal information to advertisers. We hate spam, spyware, etc. as much as you. Maybe more.
We also won't send you or your family members unsolicited e-mail ourselves. When you provide an e-mail address for someone we will send them a single invitation to join your Trusted List. That's it.
We will delete your e-mail address from our database at any time.
People in your profile's Trusted List can edit almost all the same information about you as you yourself can edit.
The only things they can't change: