Living People on Public Profiles

Actually, for Public Profiles on Geni, one also probably should not be revealing to folks the sex of the deceased's living child/children nor where they are currently living - if they are living, they are to be Private. In this case, they have Private Profiles on Geni -- BUT all those details were Publicly displayed on a Public Profile by a Curator
(I keep emphasizing "by a Curator" because those are the folks who are supposed to be models for all the rest of us, are expected to adhere to the highest standards, etc.)

I'm going to play devils advocate for a moment If a family want to keep information private, they do not add it to the obituary. Ie John Doe died he is survived by his wife and six children, twelve grandchildren. He will be buried in city cemetery.

If a family prints it in the newspaper, it become public knowledge.

Many times I have used the information in an obit to confirm a match to the right person rather than guessing which Mary Doe is the sister or John Doe.

Howard --

The GDPR restrictions do not cease to apply just because something was published some place previously.

Just because someone listed a relative in a Death Notice does not mean that relative has given up his right to privacy.

I also use the info in Obits and Death Notices to confirm matches, etc. - BUT either the the Deceased Profile should be kept Private or one should not List the info on the Living on the Profile.

Not an expert on GDPR, just talking out of common logic - the names in obituaries would usually be the ones of close relatives that are involved in the post-mortem ceremonies including the obituaries itself. If they wished to keep any detail private then they had the option of not placing it in the obit - we see that in some obits. Today's obits are not gone with next day's news, they're posted online in the online edition, can be searchable via search engine etc. I do not see any bad deed in posting what is already public.

Adding to the discussion, there are obits over 50 years old, that have listed relatives still alive, and fewer less than 10 years old where no one is alive. At what point do you draw a line and say it is OK or not OK to post an obit?

I have had only one direct request form someone in an obit, and that was to remove her husbands name from all parts of the Internet. I politely told her I do not own the Internet, etc....

re: "I do not see any bad deed in posting what is already public." -- if that were indeed policy, then Geni would not have made Private all the Profiles of Living people it previously had as Public - they would simply have gone 'Hey, they've already been Public, so it is fine for them to stay Public"

Yes "the names in obituaries would usually be the ones of close relatives" --
And possibly in some cases all mentioned have been involved in the decisions about what went on the Obituary BUT
in many (probably most) instances, some were definitely not involved in those decisions and had no say in their being mentioned

Plus the folks submitting the obituaries are not thinking about 'will someone post all of this on a Public Profile of the Deceased' or etc. - For someone on Geni (or elsewhere) to in effect go "Nyah, Nyah, someone put it in an obit, so we can post it on a Public Profile" is at the very least unkind, and I believe wrong.

re: "At what point do you draw a line and say it is OK or not OK to post an obit?"
IF it is not a Violation of Copyright Law to copy the Obituary onto the Profile -- then one can copy it BUT if one is copying it onto a Public Profile - or if the Profile later becomes Public -- one needs to check who is still alive, and redact out any listing / information on those still alive

1. GDPR Is not relevant for a Framingham MA obit.

2. An obit is not a profile, it is a text mention.

3. Geni is a membership site, it is not google.

4. The obit is far more visible and far more permanent on other venues. For example, Legacy.com is quite searchable.

5. As a profile manager or family group member, you have a right to challenge profile contributions. You could change the obit information to an uploaded document, for example.

6. Obits are a valuable genealogy artifact, used to create trees since newspapers were invented, including then-living family members. So you are challenging a practice that’s hundreds of years old.

Erica, for you, and for anyone else interested, with regard to your points above:

re: #6's Posting obits on Public Profiles is very definitely NOT a practice that is "hundreds of years old." since Public Profiles are a very recent creation.
(using obits undoubtedly is hundreds of years old - but - I am not suggesting not using obits - just not posting them on Public Profiles unless one deletes or obscures the information on the living.)

re: #3 - Public Profiles on Geni are searchable on Google and any search engine - by Profile name, by content on the Profile, etc. - , and can viewed by everyone - they are not just viewable by Geni Members -- if that was what #3 was trying to say.

re: #4: as they phrase it here https://theconversation.com/what-is-doxxing-and-why-is-it-so-scary-... "Taken individually, many of these pieces of information are benign. So you cast a ballot in the 2016 presidential election, have a child enrolled at a particular public elementary school, or once posted a comment on a local newspaper site objecting to institutional racism. A great many people know those things – even strangers. The harm doesn’t come until someone figures out how to put these pieces together and then publishes it all online."

re: #5 - Tho I appreciate your confirming my right to remove any content I object to from any profile where I am a manager or a Family Member, it is irrelevant to the question of is placing the content there in the first place an improper practice on a Public Profile
(in case it matters - in the specific case referred to in the first post -- the obit ALREADY WAS a Document on the Profile- but the Curator still chose to use SmartCopy to paste all of it, including the info on the Living, on the Profile's Overview - which is Public and Searchable)

I guess you haven’t seen the directories, published books, and so on listing living people at the time they were living. Oh, wait a minute. Anyone could have looked me up in the telephone directories everyone had - right under my parents at the same address. Probably wouldn’t be too hard to do now, & no obit needed.

So the issue is not about obituaries. You are objecting to any text referring to living persons in a deceased Geni profile.

And that’s not something you can define for anyone outside your family group.

Mike Stangel - Is Geni fine with info on the Living being included on Public Profiles of folks who are Deceased -
and if so, is it fine, for example, to give the name and a full biography of each of the deceased's living children on the Public Profile of the Deceased - or what sort of guidelines should be followed?

Hi Private User - No. In general public profiles should not include biographical information about living family members. The exception to this would be notable profiles where you can read the same info on other well-known sites (Wikipedia, IMDB, etc).

I use the general guideline that I should add no information on a public profile unless I can also add a link to a public source where anyone can verify that the information is already published by an usually reliable source.

This is ~the same rule as for sourcing on WP:BLP on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons).

The same rule applies to projects.

Mike Stangel - Am I understanding your guidelines correctly to mean there should be no info included on a Public Profile about Folks still Living -- including names of who the Deceased was "Survived by" unless either
a) the "Survivor" is now deceased or b) the Survivor is "notable" (ie worthy of being MPd?)
even if you can read the same info on Legacy.com and/or Find-A-Grave ?

Lois Mike said " should not include biographical information about living family members. "

Listing the names of the survivors of someone in an obituary is NOT listing the survivors biographical info.

Howard - if all the Death Notice has is that the Deceased is grieved by family and friends, including XX, YY, etc. -- ie just names, no relationships, etc. - then you are correct.

If the Death Notice gives the wife of the Deceased with her birth surname and the late parents of the Deceased and the siblings of the Deceased with their spouse and current location and the children of the Deceased each with their spouse and location --
THEN for each of the Living children you have their father, with a probability that the wife listed is the mother (and complete w/ her birth surname) - plus the paternal grandparents of the Living child - plus the Living Child's siblings - Plus the Living Child's spouse - Plus the Living Child's current location
Isn't this giving Biographical Information on the Living Child?

As Harald and Bjørn said -- if it's already published online by a reliable source, then there's no breach of privacy and it can be included on Geni. (we would likely still remove it if the living person requests it, but those cases are rare)