SAFTEY ISSUE - Profiles exposed.

(Safety) - drat.

Here is his profile: Private User
You can see by his activity that he is duplicating profiles including pictures of living and even under-age people that he has no significant relationship with. Someone stop him.

It has been reported Teddy

I reported it yesterday & no one at geni.com has been in contact with me. I don't think geni.com understands how damaging this is. I've worked very hard getting relatives to trust this site. I'm not sure that I'll be able to undo this damage.

Someone would be in touch with you shortly

Keep checking your notifications on top of the page between Search and your name.

When reporting to the violator (or to Geni Customer Service) such violations of Geni's Terms of Use
http://www.geni.com/company/terms_of_use
it may be useful to refer to the specific sections being violated.

In this case, those would be in section VIII Content/Activity Prohibited.

VIII.13 invades or violates any third party's right to privacy

VIII.14.6 attempting to impersonate another Member or person or posting any third party's (including without limitation any family member's) information on the Geni Services without permission;

Philip - Thanks for the tip. Yes, I was trying to invoke appropriate terms.

How do I generate a list of all of his profiles so I can request that (most of them) are deleted. I would think that a reasonable 'genealogy watershed' would be blood-relations + anyone married to blood. When you start passing through many marriage relations, you're not doing your genealogy anymore, you're doing something else.

> Angus - no one has contacted me to resolve this issue. I believe that Ken's account may have been frozen but I am not positive. All of the duplicate profiles are still there and exposed. My 'safety issues' reported through the privacy links have gone un-acknowledged. I'm still quite concerned about how geni.com is handling this issue. This incident has dramatically lessened my trust in geni.com.

Kindly check your private messages

All - Ken Anthony's account seems to have been re-enabled & he is back doing the same thing. Just yesterday, he updated a copy of my very own profile.

Ken Anthony updated profiles for Theodore Rock Nadeau and Elizabeth C Kabler (Rosensteil). Yesterday at 5:05 PM

I'm speechless.

Additionally, if you report a 'Safety Issue' via the link here:
http://www.geni.com/safety
http://www.geni.com/safety/contact

You will not get any response.
I have placed an issue that is now 4 days old and it hasn't even been assigned.

Ted

Private User

Please check your private messages.

Teddy with all the multitude of messages you created yesterday and today I am surprised that you are still insinuating that no one in Geni is helping you.

Just an update to everyone, Teddy has included me in all of his messages to Charles and Mike so it isn't necessary to take up any of your time trying to contact Geni for him.

Angus
I created multiple messages because no one was responding to me. I attempted to go through proper channels the whole time.

The issue has not been dealt with yet. There are currently profiles of my children and those of my brother's that I cannot see, edit, delete.

I don't believe that anyone would think that this has been handled well and the primary bad actor here is not me.

Please tell me which messages that I have sent are excessive.

Ted

Ted I will repeat I am a User just like you, you have the ear of two top managers of Geni.

Please I beg you give them some time to fix this problem.

Angus - Thanks for participating. It is unclear who is a geni employee and who is not. I have already given lots of time for them to fix the problem.
Here is what has happened...
Slowly they reacted.
They contacted him.
They eventually froze his account.
He was able to still continue using the account.
Most of the effort has been telling me that things are ok, that his usage doesn't violate terms of service, etc.
I don't know what the plan is, what the timeline is.
When you say 'give them some time to fix this problem'.
? How much time?
? How are they going to fix it?

What would you do if I started adding profiles to your own tree, perhaps at your father & marked each of them private so they couldn't be seen or edited by you? What if I did this for hundreds of profiles in your tree?

I have checked and Ted is right. Ken has been duplicating like mad for no apparent reason. Has anyone heard from Ken as to why?

Teddy if you wish you can forward the messages to Randy that you have written so far, first of all make sure you collaborate with each other, open the message click on forward and start typing his name, it should show up, click on it and send.

Private User
Charles, I have checked and Ted is correct that Ken Anthony Howard has been maliciously duplicating the tree for no apparent reason. Can you suspend him until we work this out?

Thanks,

Randy

Is there any possibility that these serial duplicators are using a computer application to make the duplicate profiles? I have been deleting the ones around Ted's tree and it does appear as though something methodically went along his forrest (not just his tree, but the trees of in-laws, etc), following links and making an exact replica.

It would be much easier to delete if, after deletion, the program did not kick you back to your own tree and make you click the tab to go back to the tree where you were deleting. Maybe Mike Stangel can fix that.

I need the ability to delete these profiles myself or they could all be transferred to me or someone & then returned to an appropriate manager when asked.

geni needs to put in systems to reduce the possibility of bulk duplication. it pollutes the tree, the data and the end-user experience. Any site with UGC (User-generated-Content) needs to have a strong anti-griefer component otherwise the site dies. Look at friendster's demise for example.

Here's a relevant article about Identity Theft specifically of children's & why it is absolutely essential that geni.com takes this issue extremely seriously.

TITLE: Child Identity Theft Takes Advantage Of Kids' Unused Social Security Numbers

Every few weeks, Stephanie McManis receives a phone call from a collection agency asking for someone she never met. She recently opened a letter from a bank threatening to sue her for defaulting on a loan she never took out. She checks her credit report monthly, disputing late payments on emergency room visits she never made.

McManis, 31, says she is a victim of identity theft, a well-documented problem these days. One detail elevates her case from the typical, however: her identity was stolen when she was 12 years old. Now, nearly two decades later, she still can't separate herself from a checkered financial past created before she was old enough to drive.

more... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/21/child-identity-theft_n_931...

Ted, lay off the paranoia stuff so geni can concentrate on the real issue here, which is the massive duplication. As you can tell from the article, all the so-called identity theft stems from either (a) batch theft of data (credit card, social security number, etc -- none of it on geni), or (b) family members or friends committing fraud by making fraudulent credit applications. Again, the fact that a website says a kid exists, has a birthdate, and has parents with names is NOT something that really ever gets used for this type of fraud. Please focus on your real issue here, which is the wholesale duplication of hundreds of profiles. The last thing we need is for geni to become a site that locks down information.

Randy - Thanks for the coaching. I would be very happy to concentrate on the duplication issue. I wrote a note to Charles this morning & have not heard back yet. I don't mean to over-represent this issue. I didn't write this article nor search for it, it was at a website that I commonly read. I don't want to battle you as you are a friend and have been very helpful here, nor geni who I want to succeed as much as possible. I didn't read the article in the same way that you did but I'll leave it at that.

Please tell me what I can do to better 'focus on the real issue here'. I'm eager for any and all suggestions. What should I be doing?

Geni has a staff holiday today, so wait to see what happens tomorrow.

Randy

Thanks, I will & I hope that all geni staff have a very enjoyable holiday.

I have another thought to facilitate eliminating duplications:
Might it be possible for Geni to tighten up the algorithm for matches displayed to GeniPro users so that we have fewer false positives to wade through as we are searching for duplicates? This would save a lot of time working through the backlog.