Something that I did not know about WikiTree.

Question

I did not know that anyone in the world can contact me via email through WikiTree even if they are not signed into WikiTree. I imagine they do not have to be registered. Someone has done that twice now. I guess there is no privacy in WikiTree. If I knew that anybody in the world can email me via WikiTree and claim they are immediate family, I may never have joined.  It is scary and I fear for my family. My family comes first in my life and now I cannot delete anyone that is already listed in the people that I have entered. Thanks Wikitree for allowing the world to access me. I can never begin to tell how this makes me feel like inside.

I am honestly not in the mood to hear rules and regulation recitals so save them for another day. Now I am going to have to speak to all of the immediate family and explain things to everything. I imagine there are going to be some hurt feelings here. I have lost some respect because this has occurred. Where are my rights? May I request that nobody be allowed to contact members unless they are registered and signed in.

Comments

Hello Jerry.

I can understand your concern. As you say it's scary.

Do you recall the first times you received "spam" emails?

Anyone in the world can contact you via email without your consent!. It's your choice to respond or not to respond.

I hope this helps to relieve your concern a little.

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BTW, I was able to expand two family branches thanks to no-WikiTree members that got in touch with me via WikiTree "private messages".

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I agree with your concern, Jerry. In my opinion, only signed-in fellow WikiTreers should be able to send me a private message from a WikiTree profile that I manage. Non-member visitors and non-signed-in members should not be able to send me a private message, a.k.a, an email.

And I would prefer that my fellow signed-in WikiTreers not be able to email me, either!

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I don't see that the email is displayed (maybe I missed it though?). I think they're just forwarded privately to your email from WikiTree.

I understand that you're aggravated by it though. Maybe you can switch your email for here to another more anonymous one.

I'm so boring, I always doubt anyone would find me or my life interesting enough to cause me problems so it doesn't bother me personally. That, and I have like 15k unread emails.

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Must really steam you when that Nigerian Prince e-mails you to give you his money, huh?

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Thank you Lindy. At least someone really understands. But I do not mind if any signed in member signs in and messages me.

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Ruben, thanks for your concern and isn't it wonderful when you can expand branches?  You can do that  more on WT than any other site.

Answer 1

They can contact you, but they are not given your email address.

Comments

Unless you respond to them - which is up to you. I often do this without thinking, but that's on me if I do that.

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J and Scott I did not reply. I know that nobody will get your email address from this site. I just thought the messages were internal.

Answer 2

Hello Jerry, I understand that you are upset. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when we're contacted on Wikitree, the system forwards the email from that person to us. The person cannot see your email address unless/if you decide to respond to them. Also, there is no reason your email address should compromise the safety of your family. You could always sign up for a 'burner' email address and put that on your Wikitree profile. A 'burner' would be something like Yahoo mail, where it's not connected to any of your social media or any websites you might own.

Comments

Also, by the way, Ancestry has a similar practice and I think the other genealogy websites do too.  I guess you won't want to sign up to GEDmatch.

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Jessica you are correct. and I understand what ypu said. but nobody discovered my email address in WT. It was sent anonymously to me using a profile that anyone can see. They sent me a message through WT without ever seeing my address. It surprised me that anyone in the world can send a member here a message without having signed in.

Answer 3

When you think about it, if you are developing a single worldwide tree, it makes quite a bit of sense to provide a way for others you may not know, or know about, to contact you.  As others have noted, nobody access to  any personal or identifying information about you or your family other than what you have posted publicly on the site.

Comments

Dennis, I know that this person never found out my email. Even when members sign in the email address is not given to them. The only way anyone can get my email address is if I reply through my email. My initial disappointment was that someone that was not signed in could actually contact me, or anyone for that matter. I hope that I made that more understandable.

Answer 4

As others say,  the person sending the message doesn't know your email address.

The problem as I see it is that if you reply then you do reveal it.

Other sites  such as 23 and me and Ancestry have internal systems , you reply within them; no problem there,  neither email address is revealed and I have never received a message from a non member. I also have belonged to a couple of forums where again personal messages are internal ; only members can send them and only after a number of contributions.

Like Jerry, I didn't realise this aspect of wiki-tree when I joined. My solution is not to reply to these messages. It means I potentially miss out on things and  it is probably also frustrating for some senders; I'm sure most are legitimate but I feel insecure replying.

The argument that one can use a specially set up email address assumes firstly a knowledge on joining  that wiki  enables such messages. Secondly   a facility with computers and the internet  to enable them to create secondary email addresses. I suggest that given the age of many members, there are many that won't even have considered it let alone know how to  (Personal experience here of  recently trying to set up a separate email address from my husband; we'd had joint ones , addresd changed 3 times over 3 internet providers, two countries and 20+ years)

Comments

Helen, for what it's worth, you can create a separate email account that you don't use for WikiTree, but use that to respond to any private messages you get when you're hesitant to reveal your "real" email address.

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Helen, I did not reply to that message. I have about 6 emails that are not attached to my real email. In my real email, if someone is not in my email address, they cannot contact me. The email  is tossed before it even reaches me. Only 12 people know my real email address and I never received any junk mail in more than 10 years. I also go to a site where you can use  their email and it only lasts 10 to 15 minutes then it is erased. That is a true burner email. As you mentioned above, I thought this was an internal only messaging system.

Answer 5

I appreciate everybody's answers, thank you each and everyone of you. All of you almost got it but still missed the entire point and I am grateful.  :o)

The point is that anyone in the world can find your most intimate grouping of your entire family. Being unknown with a burned email address and say something like "Hi you are my close family relative and I want to talk about Me and Mrs.Wxyz. I know you are related to them with all the same family relatives as Mr and Mrs Wxyz. Yadda, yadda, yadda. They do not have to know my address all they have to do is look at my tree. I am a member of Ancestry and it is not as easy to find info about someone else as it is here.  This address is a burned email address. Twelve people know my real email address and nobody can send me an email unless the person is in my address book. In the 14 years that I have my real email address,  I have received NO junk mail or any messages from anyone that I did not want. My dear friends, this site and others make you vulnerable to strangers finding out your most personal family and thoughts. I strong!y believe that WikiTree and whatever sites would make anyone sign in to be able to message a member. This is my opinion. This is my request. It is not incorrect,  it is one more step to possibly keeping dreadful messages from appearing in someone's email. Now anyone knows my name and it they read anything about me knows where I live without me ever giving my address. I am removing all of that now and I imagine WT saves everything in a  person's profile.I

I appreciate all the cars and loving going on here. This is not the same  as junk mail. All of my fake email addresses have a fake name for myself so I don't get junk mail with my and on it. This is my opinion. It is not wrong, it is exactly that, an opinion. Thanks everyone for your input. I thought someone work agree with more safety for us. I hope and pray nobody else gets a personal letter like this from a stranger. Again thank you for your opinions.

Comments

Jerry, I get it - believe me, I do.  The only thing is that I think your concern is not really about someone being able to send you an email without your address having been revealed to them.  What I hear you saying is that you are concerned about all the information in your family profiles being available to anyone who can connect to the internet, which is really something very different.

This is why WikiTree has all the different privacy levels.  You can choose a higher level of privacy for profiles whose information you don't want revealed to the world.  I realize that when you get to much older profiles, they are required to be open, but I don't think those are your concern.  

Perhaps what you'd like is to be able to make the information in these profiles available to members but not to non-members, which is something that can't be done - the privacy level is the same for non-members as for members who are not on the profile's trusted list.

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Jerry, what "most intimate grouping of your entire family" are you referring to?

Unless you have made the profiles of your immediate family public (and profiles of living people can *not* be public; they must be unlisted), no one-- logged in or otherwise-- can see them unless you've added them to the Trusted List of those profiles.

Profiles of deceased people are also private (or at least have limited displays) IF they have living relatives attached to them.

So if you look at my profile, you'll see that I have a father, mother and siblings, but you can't see their names.  You can't even see that I'm married as my spouse is not even displayed.

So I guess I'm not yet understanding what you think strangers are seeing that you don't want them to see.

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BTW, I looked at your profile; it's very private. I can't see that you've got any relatives; I can't even see your ancestors.

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And Jerry, how would anyone find out your thoughts?

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Jillaine, would you please explain how it works for your parents to be private?  When I look at my own profile, my parents are not hidden (and I don't want them to be).  Do people have a choice of how their deceased parents are displayed?

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Julie, there are different privacy levels on every profile. You can get there by clicking the "Privacy" tab on the profiles. 

More information about the different Privacy levels is available here

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Thank you.  I see that now.

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Julie you need to be looking at your profiles under the Public View tab (top left tab) in order to see what everyone else sees. Otherwise if you are looking at your profiles under the Private View tab (top right tab), which is the default view, then yes you will see everything on the profile - and you can see everything because it is your profile.

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Julie, my parents are, God be thanked, still living. Hence private /unlisted.

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I guess I just assume everyone's as old as I am!  Sorry!

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Julie, I wrote some personal thoughts where it said memories on  some of the profiles and  some information in some of Biographies That I thought might be info that cannot be discovered through Ancestry or FamilySearch.

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Jerry, if those memories were posted to the profiles of living people, then as others have said elsewhere in this thread, they are not visible to just anyone.  But if they were posted to public profiles, then, yes, people can see them.

You said people could find out about your family from WikiTree.  Do you have neighbors?  Do your neighbors know who your family is?  There was another G2G discussion recently about location information attached to photos making people vulnerable.  In both these cases, the poster seemed to be worrying about what people could find out on-line.  But most residential burglaries are committed by people from the victims' neighborhood.  Most rapes and murders are done by the victims' acquaintances, not total strangers, especially total strangers who might live across the country from you or halfway around the world.  

Genealogists are a pretty harmless bunch.

Answer 6

Anyone can call you on the phone, mail you a letter or email you. That's how the world is.

I've never had a random email from anyone via Wikitree, the few I have received have been from people trying to piece their family tree together, and I'm always glad to help. Occasionally they have provided useful hints on profiles I manage.

Communication isn't scary.

Comments

I just had the other day (during the Thon) a mail of someone who wasn't logged in. She wondered about a relative I had added during the Connect-A-Thon because they shared the surname.

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Actually, for some of us, it is rather scary, However, I have fewer problems contacting you Rob since I know that you are a legitimate member of wiki-tree.

 But you are also wrong in that not anyone can phone, write or email me.

Outside wiki-tree, I use the protections afforded by privacy laws.My name and address is not on public versions of the electoral register, my name is not in a telephone directory. When I  use a firm on the internet, I almost always tick the no box which means they can't send me more advertising gumph.

I don't remember the last time I received unsolicited post addressed to me nor emails (except via wikitree). I get the odd scam phone-call but these are very few and I usually report them. I don't think I'm unusual in wanting to know something about the person I'm communicating with.

Answer 7

Rob Judd is 100% right. I'm really disappointed by some of the comments I've read on this thread.  People who don't want to be contacted.  People who don't respond when they are contacted.  People who don't want others to know about their families. Why on earth did you join a freely available, public website in the first place?  

 

For the record, I have a public tree on Ancestry, am signed up for GEDmatch using my real name and my usual e-mail address, and my profile here is as open as I can make it.  I have posted my e-mail address on my Ancestry profile along with a promise to respond to everyone who contacts me.  The worst that has ever happened is that occasionally I get some random question about a distant relative I've put on my tree whom I don't care about.  I have also developed some very good contacts who have useful information to share.

 

Comments

I completely agree. I've been on Ancestry, GEDmatch and WIkitree for nearly 10 years. I've never been contacted by anyone who didn't have sincere intentions. The most annoying conversations I've had is where a distant relative sends me a massage, is enthusiastic to speak with me, then doesn't follow through, and drops the conversation we started. That can be irksome, but hardly an intrusion of my privacy.

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Julie I never said that I did NOT want to be contacted. I noted my disappointment that someone has contacted me about my immediate family without signing into WT. I have received plenty of messages from other members of WT and I have sent out to many members of WT. none of them were as outlandish of an accusation as this one and my email was there for anyone to see.

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Jerry, I think our question about this is .. if WE can't see your immediate family on Wikitree, how could someone else?

Are you sure this is not just some random spammer?

They don't need to know your email address in order to contact you .. and they should NOT find it out unless you respond to them by email.

IF it really is someone with knowledge of your immediate family, it argues that they already know you in some way outside of Wikitree, because that information is not available to US as logged-in members.

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Jerry, someone else on this thread said they didn't want to be contacted.  That's why I referred to "comments."  

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by the outlandish accusation, and looking back at your original post, I see that you said someone contacted you claiming to be immediate family.  It doesn't appear that previous comments in this thread addressed that.  I wonder if someone found you on-line while searching for their birth parents, or maybe an unknown father.  I'm not suggesting you are the father.  Maybe the person was claiming to be a first cousin, for example.

Finding, or being found by, unknown close relatives can be one of the most upsetting things about on-line genealogy for some people.  For others it can be a joyous discovery even if there is some initial shock.  I've known people on both sides of these contacts, i.e. the searchers and the found.  In my own personal small sample, the newly discovered relationships have (ultimately) been good for all parties.

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Julie I am sorry for not understanding your comment about not wanting to be contacted. But then almost everyone in this thread misunderstood my initial message and everyone joined the bandwagon saying the same things over and over.

I am  so happy when people contact me about being related. I do the same to others.

The message I received was not so nice about my family and there were accusations involved. It has nothing to do with being related or junk mail or anything else of the above messages in this thread.. They miss the point entirely and question me as if I am the bad person here. The comments keep coming at me. I am sorry that I ever mentioned that I received a horrible email from someone. I did not know I was such an ogre for this.

Yes I am a father of two wonderful children. It has nothing to do with being found out by a relative. I am so elated when a close or even a distant relative messages me. Several relatives have used my sindings in their trees. Hopefully  they have double checked my profiles and the sources.

I appreciate the fact that you understood some of, if not all of my initial message,

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Jerry .. there is nothing that I can see in your original post that indicates the message you received was in any way horrible.

I did not know that anyone in the world can contact me via email through WikiTree even if they are not signed into WikiTree. I imagine they do not have to be registered. Someone has done that twice now. I guess there is no privacy in WikiTree. If I knew that anybody in the world can email me via WikiTree and claim they are immediate family, I may never have joined.  It is scary and I fear for my family. My family comes first in my life and now I cannot delete anyone that is already listed in the people that I have entered. Thanks Wikitree for allowing the world to access me. I can never begin to tell how this makes me feel like inside.

I am honestly not in the mood to hear rules and regulation recitals so save them for another day. Now I am going to have to speak to all of the immediate family and explain things to everything. I imagine there are going to be some hurt feelings here. I have lost some respect because this has occurred. Where are my rights? May I request that nobody be allowed to contact members unless they are registered and signed in.

It talks of privacy.  It talks of you wanting the message system to be only for those already registered and logged in.  It mentions being contacted by unknowns is scary.  It mentions you losing respect (presumably within your family).  It talks of hurt feelings, but not why.

But there is nothing there about how horrible the email was.

I have been contacted by unknowns a few times.  I was sceptical and cautious, but did not find it scary (and I speak as someone who has been e-stalked for a long time). 

I am not trying to downplay your feelings here, but you are saying we don't understand why you are upset — and I would 100% agree with that.  I know *I* don't.  But you cannot blame us for not understanding something that was not explained in the first place.

We are, all of those who responded here, trying to both understand AND to help; and also to be supportive.  For that to work, we need to have more information than your first post actually gave.

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Jerry, I do not think you're an ogre and I don't think I said that.  In general, I think you and the others who commented about feeling uncomfortable with contacts from strangers are perhaps overly cautious and missing out on opportunities to connect with people who may have information to share.

I also think Melanie has a point.  You did mention "outlandish accusations" later in the thread.  Because you had already said the person was claiming to be a close relative, I just assumed the accusation was something like your father having fathered children outside of his marriage.  I don't know anything about your family.  However, I've seen several cases where people's parents did have children who were unknown to their other children.  It can be quite a surprise when a half-sibling pops up.  Some people get very defensive about their parents' reputations.

If in your case the accusations were more sinister, I don't think you can blame us for not understanding what you did not explain.

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Julie, you did not call me an ogre. I would never think that about you. I find you genuine and honest in your responses.

I do not feel uncomfortable with  contacts from other people. I send out way more messages to strangers than I receive. I don't know how far I would have been without messages from others.

Being a surprise relative is not an accusation. That eliminates whatever you were thinking.

I never expected anybody to understand what was in the email. If anyone expects  me to reveal what was in the email, it's not going to happen. This thread was not meant for anyone to know what the email said. It was meant to show that I don't necessarily agree with WT message system as compared to a sign in system. What I said in the first message is the explanation. Telling what the message is will not help the situation, it will only help nosy people's curiosity. I have never asked to peek into anybody's personal life inside or outside of WT and expect the same from everybody toward me. This is a genealogy site not a gossip site.

I am not blaming anyone for not understanding the email because I never revealed it.

 I do not think it was a spammer or a prank as Melanie asked. I tried twice to answer Melanie's questions and both times they never appeared in this thread. I hope she can read this one and get some answers. Their real email is revealed in the email. It was not a secondary email like Hotmail, gmail or yahoo. I traced where the email came from and I also know what  their IP address is. I do not know their real name yet but to find that out is no more difficult. Oh my God! I guess Jerry is not as computer illiterate as some members thought.

This is my last response in this thread. Most of it was repetition, no sense in continuing. Whoever I responded to, I hope I answered your questions. Thank you  Ruben, Julie and Melanie for your responses. If you have any more question message me,,, after you sign in   :o)

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Anonymous Kelts,,,,,I rather resonated with your post but. Then I went to your profile and I felt confused,,,it didn't seem to fit within the context of your post re visibility and accessibility,,,,,this is not criticism,,,,just confusion

Answer 8

Hi Jerry,

This is why I gave the absolute minimum information I possibly could for myself and my father, and why I won't be adding a profile for my mother any time soon. I did want to make it possible for dad's great grands to explore the family history, but considered the hidden costs to our privacy & security. I'm glad I went with Ancestry first, because you can change privacy settings for your entire tree and even have the option of deleting your tree. Meanwhile, I just smile when reading the data doctors' reminders that Anonymous isn't an acceptable name for myself or Dad and I "need" to pick a gender.

Comments

There are an amazing amount of wonderful people in WikiTree. I have learned more from this site than any other site. But it seems like everyone's fears do not matter to some if it slides against this site. I won't give anymore details.

I think it was a good idea that you started in Ancestry first. I did the same thing for basically the same reasons.  Main reason is that you can delete a single person or your entire tree. Not here. There are many that have followed my tree and used it as they please. Nobody has ever complained when I deleted people from that tree that did not belong there. Ancestry seems to be neater  in this aspect.  

I do not care what sex you are or want to be or if you changed it or not. I assume Anonymous means you do not want people to know. I am fine with that. It is a  pleasure to meet you. Thanks for the message.

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It's fine to use "Anonymous" or an initial for one of a living person's name fields for privacy reasons.

In the next couple of weeks, there is going to be a "do not display" option added for gender.

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Jerry,

I am genderless on Wikitree because even a careful reading of all the  obituaries and census records of my grandparents and their sons would leave me as one of a certain pool of grandchildren. That is more specifically why I avoided volunteering information about my dad and have not added any of his siblings, or my own gender. Certainly, someone could puzzle through the tracking living descendants of my paternal grandparents and find our contact information on the internet. I have used my own experience working down family trees to find living descendants to realize I want to build a bit more privacy into my edges of the tree than WikiTree settings provide. Wikitree is also built to remove the privacy settings of people born one hundred years ago (120 yrs ago?), whether or not a date of death has been entered. The internet is still young and unregulated. We haven't worked out what is needed to prevent exploitation of personal data on social media. WikiTree is a combination of history and social networking and has some sort of partnership with Google and Facebook.  

Being Anonymous can't prevent anyone from contacting me, but at least strangers can't address me by name, and that reminds me that I have options to think through whether and how I want to respond.

One hundred years from now, the profiles I've set up for my dad and I could still be unsourced blanks that could easily be either improved by others or detailed and sourced profiles could be merged into ours with minimum fuss.

I think your message affirming gender identity and expression is an important one. I agree and will continue to advocate for wider acceptance for more nuanced relationship options between parents and children and for gender expression in genealogy work. I've never seen an option for entering a surrogate mother, let alone a dad who was the biological mother or mom who was biological father.

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Anonymous, I did not mean to make a gender statement. I do apologize if I mislead anyone on this topic  or any other topic.  

Actually because my beliefs I will not politicize gender nor discuss my opinion.  As for this site gender is a part of discovering our ancestry and it is valid.

I will offer this, if any part of a profile for a living person, does not want to be revealed for any reason, it should not be mandatory to include it. Nobody else is suppose to see this information anyway. What would anyone else gain from knowing personal information except curiosity? Most likely nothing.

Some living members of my family do not want to be included in a family tree so I do not include my  living relatives unless they ask me to. Personal rights and wishes before curiosity. If WT wants to know something they are welcome to contact me about it and we will discuss it.  Other than that, in my personal opinion, something that is considered personal should remain that way. I hope this satisfied your comments.

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Hi, Jerry -

I hope I can put your mind at ease by sharing information about the Unlisted privacy setting: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Privacy#Unlisted

This is the setting that is used for living people who aren't members of WikiTree. You don't need to add much information at all on an Unlisted profile, and it can be used as a placeholder.

On the other hand, as Anonymous Reed mentioned, a lot of people who don't want to be identifiable by their tree branches just don't connect their profile to their family. That's OK to do, as well.

The flipside of all of this is that some people do want to have distant cousins contact them in order to find information they're lacking.

Fortunately, both of these scenarios are available for our members. :-)

Answer 9

My entire tree is public, except a few branches that were created by a cousin.  I have been thrilled to be contacted by distant family members, a few times, over the years.  Our ancestors and relatives are shared with many others, known and unknown.  The point of it all is to make connections with the family we all share.

Comments

Mark W. Thanks for commenting. I hope my tree is public except for living people.

I have been stuck about 10 years  at Mt paternal 6x Great Grandfather. I need information at this profile.  I had 4 different professional researchers, one of which is retired and a family member actually go to Somerset County to look into this brickwall. There has been nothing found. Nothing.

If my tree is not public please let me know.

I like when a relative messages me. WT has introduced me to more family members than any other site. But if I remember back more than 2 years, someone contacted me without signing into WT. I do not know if this was legitimate or not. BTW they ended up not being related so that is moot anyway.

As far as I know I am the first person ever to research back into the 1600's in my family. I have not seen anywhere somebody find this about my family. It is exciting and a pleasure to help others this way.  Wish you great success in your searches.

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I never knowingly add living people to the tree.  I figure that it's up to them to decide to participate, or not.  How wonderful that you are researching your early family!

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That is thoughtful of you not to add living people.

Thank you. It feels wonderful to research that far back.  I want to go back even more. My Paternal 6x Great Grandmother's family has been traced back to early 1500's.

Although it is frustrating, I find it mindblowing to be able to go back this far.

Answer 10

Can I suggest a system change?  As it is the WikiTree computer that is doing the forwarding, it must know whether the sender has a current WikiTree login or not.  It also is able, without much extra programming, to alter the Subject line and prefix it with something useful (like the 'Re:' text in a reply).  This prefix could warn the recipient that the sender is not a WT member ("WikiTree Warning: sender is not a member:  " ).  There are also various flag-settings that could be done, but these are perhaps not standard enough across all mail systems.  I think the prefix method could work just like some spam-checking systems which warn you in a similar manner, putting you on your guard.  The recipient could then help by doing his own bit of configuration in his rulesets (if his mailer has them) to process the 'non-member' prefix in whatever way he wants, such as delete, move to spam, set a flag, move to a folder, forward somewhere else, and so on.  So someone who really does not want to be contacted by non-members just has a rule to delete messages with that prefix, so he never even has to know they had arrived.

Comments

When a private message is sent by someone who is not logged in to WikiTree, the message does indicate that the person was not a logged-in member. It's at the bottom of the message, but it's easy to find this:

The sender, Name (email), was not logged-in to WikiTree. If the message looks like bulk e-mail spam, please forward it to {info at wikitree.com} right away.

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Thank you Ellen. But the email was deleted 2.5 years ago.  I noted your response so I have it as a reference in the future if it happens again. Much appreciated.

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Yes of course - that may be just the thing that an incoming rule could use.  I will set one up for myself and see how it performs.

However, checking through similar emails reveals that a lot of people who have WT logins send me messages when they are logged-out, generating the same warning text.  So we cannot really tell whether the sender is a member or not.  I can't think of a solution to that, except to suggest to developers that some dialogue is introduced that, if they are not logged-in, asks the sender to establish who they are, by logging-in if they are able.  Then we have to assume if they cannot login they are not a member or at least being un-cooperative - grounds enough for the recipient's ruleset to flag or dump it.

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You could post a notice on your profile page saying that you will not respond to messages from people you do not recognize who are not logged in to Wikitree.