All Of Your Personal Family Information Is On This Website Without Your Knowledge, From Ex’s To Siblings — How To Remove It
The internet is filled with one hoax after another, ranging from celebrity deaths, how you can get free money from sharing a Facebook status, and reports that your private pictures are out for all to see. Many people pass those around without checking their validity, and people end up causing a panic for no reason. However, this latest one isn’t a hoax, as a website really does have a lot of your personal family information on it from relatives to exes to all of your addresses.
It has started being passed around social media, and this time, it is very certainly true. A website called Family Tree Now has collected as much personal information as possible about people, and they’ve put it all together in one place for the world to view. Sure, it may be info that is already out there, but it feels very invasive when put all in one place together.
Making matters worse is that the website is now being shared across different social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. This is only drawing even more attention to the loads of information that is sitting out there for everyone to see, and it isn’t just the names of your brothers and sisters.
Upon finding yourself on Family Tree Now, you will be able to find out any names that are associated with yours. This includes known relatives such as parents, spouses, sons, and daughters. In some instances, it will even connect you with cousins, aunts, uncles, and even past spouses and their families.
Looking a bit further on your page, you will also find your current and any past addresses that you have had in life. This doesn’t just include physical addresses, but also P.O. Boxes and even the addresses of those associated names which are connected to you.
Family Tree Now states that all of their information comes from them and “Living People Records (Online). They advise that the information is “compiled from 1000’s of U.S. Public Records Sources, including property, business, historical, and current records.”
“Welcome to FamilyTreeNow.com! We have one of the largest collections of genealogy records anywhere, and they’re all 100% free to search! Start researching your family tree by entering a name above and see what we find, or start your family tree now.”
Again, this information is out there for the world to find on the Internet, but a lot of people don’t like it being made simple to find it all in one place. This kind of takes all the work out of online stalking and allows people to know more about you in much easier fashion.
Luckily, Fox 61 has figured out a way to protect yourself a little bit and get your information off of Family Tree Now. All you have to do is follow a few simple steps to remove that personal info collection off of their site.
- Go to Family Tree Now.
- Locate your name and information on the website.
- Go to the bottom of the page, find where it says “Privacy,” and click on it.
- Scroll down about 1/3 of the way down the page and look for a blue link that says to “Opt Out Here.” This is quite hard to find, but it is under the subhead of “INFORMATION WE COLLECT” and then next to “Opt Out Of Living People Records.”
- On the next page titled “Opt Out of Records,” simply click that you are not a robot and hit the button to “Begin Opt Out Procedure.”
- Search for your profile again and click it.
- Press the big red button at the top of the page that says “Opt Out This Record.”
A page will pop up that states your opt-out request is bring processed and your record will be removed within 48 hours. Sure, the information is still out there on the internet somewhere, but it isn’t nearly as easy to find.
Many websites do charge users to get this information, but Family Tree Now is more than happy to give it to you for free. Wethersfield Police Chief James Cetran in Connecticut posted on the office’s Facebook page that this site is “one-stop shopping for identity theft.”
Family Tree Now really does have your personal information out there for the world to see, and they aren’t actually doing anything wrong. They’ve simply developed programs to find all of your personal and private family information that is out there on the internet. With that, they collected it in one place and have it there for the world to see. While it isn’t illegal, it does feel invasive, and you have a way to opt out and remove it.
[Featured Image by Carl Court/Getty Images]
