Over the last few weeks, the genealogy website “Family Tree Now” made the rounds on Facebook and through the media when people realized how easy it was to find your personal information, addresses, names and relatives by quickly searching a name on their site. It isn’t new to have this information easily accessible online….these kinds of websites have been available for years, for both free and paid services…but its getting more threatening. Most people find this an intrusion of privacy- especially since (as we detailed in our last blog post), being able to find a “mother’s maiden name” easily online could potentially expose your online accounts to major security threats!
Patrick Allen and the Lifehacker team recently published a great article about this, and showed several similar websites to Family Tree Now that have comparable data exposed. Luckily, many of you “opted out” of the Family Tree Now site when you saw the post on Facebook or the news, but have you opted out of the others as well? The Lifehacker article provides the links that you need to follow through to “opt-out” of several of these similar sites. Spend a few minutes and check your vulnerability on these sites to make sure your personal information is as protected as possible. Don’t forget to share this with elderly neighbors or friends too!
Lifehacker: http://lifehacker.com/how-to-opt-out-of-the-most-popular-people-search-sites-1791536533
