TribalPages is very happy to announce the availability of our new Privacy Levels for all 200,000 Family Tree Websites.

This new feature allows site owners a tremendous amount of control over what information on their site is available, to whom, and under what conditions. This is a project that has been months in the making, and we want to thank the very patient and helpful Feedback Group who helped us get where we are.

Among many other options, sites can now allow public access to deceased relative information, while protecting living relative data with a Visitor Password.

Privacy Control Background

As TribalPages has grown, our users have constantly been torn between the desire to publish their genealogy information to the net and the need to protect individual privacy. In recent years, this has become a bigger issue as identify theft has become a grown to be a real threat that many internet users are aware of. Even without the threat of identity theft, we have repeatedly seen instances where people listed other relatives' information in their tree, only to have those people come back extremely irate about their private information being made public. (Often these irate family members came directly to TribalPages for solutions, which is an unpleasant position, to say the least).

Our initial response to this was to allow users to assign a visitor password to their site and to lock down the site. If a visitors password was set, then only visitors with the password could see any of the site. In addition, we provided the means to hide all living relatives (or a portion of their information). These safeguards could be used together or separately.

Unfortunately, our users faced a new problem: nobody could find their site, and they had to choose between too-tight and too-loose security.

Let the Site Owners Choose!

Once we came to realize the position we were in, we looked for a solution that would fit everyone. We didn't find one. However, we did find that there were several basic ways our customers used TribalPages, and that they each had separate goals and needs. By starting with those basic desires and allowing users to customize access where they need to, we think we've got a great solution.

With this in mind, we have come up with three basic Privacy Levels to help our users get a sane security and privacy policy that fits their needs. When new users create their sites, they will need to choose a privacy level during the sign-up process. Our existing customers will be invited to choose a level, but will, by default, have a Custom Level that gives them equivalent security to they have right now. (Where an exact match is impossible, we'll be stricter to start off)

The Privacy Levels are:

• Private - Private Sites allow family members who know the visitor password to access all of your site's functionality while protecting your private information from outside users. Outside visitors can only see a summary page with basic site statistics, the site's welcome message, and a secure method to contact the owner.
• Standard - Standard Sites attempt to balance the need for privacy with the desire to share the site's contents with the world. Family members who know the visitor password may access all of your site's functionality, including information about living relatives. Outside visitors can see a summary page with basic site statistics, as well as information about historic and deceased individuals. Information about living relatives is hidden from the general public.
• Public - Public Sites are completely open to the world. All of the information you add is available to the public, just as it is to your friends and family. This style of site are convenient for certain circumstances, but is dangerous as it exposes private information about both living and deceased individuals to everyone and increases the risk of identify theft and abuse.
• Custom - If none of these options are 100% right for you, choose a Custom Site and configure exactly what you need.

As a current customer, you can see your Privacy Settings by editing your site and choosing, "Tools -> Privacy". You'll be shown the Privacy Levels choices. Each of the basic levels (Locked, Private, Standard and Public) have a link that explains why users would choose that level. Please take the time to consider which Level best fits your goals.
If you don't find what you're looking for, choose a Custom Level, which gives you very granular control over what you want to allow users to see.

Searching for and Publicizing your Site

There are two parts of this new feature that are worth specifically calling out. First is the fact that (depending on your Privacy Level) there is now a chance that your site will be seen by the major search engines. This is one of the most common requests we receive, and we're glad to finally have a way to provide this functionality to those users. To specifically control which information can be searched, look at the Custom Level, and the options you have there.
Second, on the Custom Page, we have added a check-box to allow TribalPages to publicize your site. This would be through submissions to search engines, directories, syndication, etc. If you choose this option, we will only use the information available on your summary page when publicizing your site and we will never use any living person or contact information.

NOTE: Both of these options are big changes for both TribalPages and our users, so there will be a delay of about 30 days between the launch of the new Privacy Levels and the time we start publicizing sites or letting search engines in.

Getting Help with Privacy Levels

This will certainly cause a number of questions, and we invite everyone to join the discussion on the Technical Forum [1], where we will answer them to the best of our abilities.

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