Me and my family discovered that Geni will give out information about your immediate family relations. The problem: go to www.geni.com and type some name into “Search People” form (you can try your family name or some friend’s, if it’s not too common). For example result for “Lady Gaga” will tell me that she’s “Daughter of Joseph Germanotta and Cynthia Germanotta, Sister of Natali Germanotta”.
That’s probably public inforamtion for Lady Gaga but I wouldn’t want that kind of information be public about my family (none of us is famous). Also, as the manager of many profiles in my family tree I feel obliged to keep their privacy. So I searched around to find if it’s possible to hide it without deleting the family tree. And without further ado the solution:
- find the profile that is managed by you;
- on the profile page locate and click “Edit” link just under “Immediate Family” section;
- click “Hide” for every person you don’t want to be publicly linked to that person and voila!
I wish that Geni would be more restrictive about this (hide everything by default). but as long as the aforementioned solution works, I’m okay with that service.
Hi there,
My name is Amanda and I’m the Social Media Coordinator at Geni. I wanted to help clarify how you can control the privacy of your profile and those that you manage. You can update your privacy and permission settings to make your information private. Once you update these settings, no one outside of your family group will be able to view the information on your profile or your tree. Your profile will also no longer appear in public search results.
Please take a look at our FAQ How do I control what is listed publicly? http://help.geni.com/entries/471127-how-do-i-control-what-is-listed-publicly
Let me know if you have any questions!
Amanda
The Geni Team
Amanda, thanks for the reply. I’ve looked thoroughly in Geni’s privacy settings (including on the pages you are referring to in FAQ). None of them addressed the issue I was having – I was able to hide information about myself but I wasn’t able to hide information about my relatives that I manage.
I’m not talking about profiles being visible to public (they’re private, that’s OK) but about if not logged in, go to Geni and search for any name I can see their family connections (A is son of X and Y, brother of B and C).
I guess that’s by design, but I’d like it to be private.