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Family history and other people's privacy

9/27/2026

A family tree is never really just about you - it is about parents, siblings, cousins, and often people who are still alive and never asked to be written about. That is worth pausing on, because it is easy to record information about a living relative without thinking about whether they would want it kept.

MyOrigins does not currently have automated tools that detect or restrict sensitive information about living third parties - a home address, a health condition, a difficult personal history. That responsibility sits with you. A reasonable rule of thumb: record what helps tell an honest, respectful family story, and be more cautious with details about people who are still living than about ancestors who passed generations ago.

This matters doubly once sharing enters the picture. If you invite a contributor or share categories of research with another MyOrigins user, anything you have recorded about a living relative becomes visible to them too. Before sharing a category like family relationships or narrative details, it is worth a quick mental check: would the people involved be comfortable with this specific information reaching this specific person?

None of this means avoiding difficult or sensitive family history - some of the most meaningful stories involve exactly that. It just means treating other people's lives with the same care you would want applied to your own.