Privacy and Our Ancestors

Has your concern for privacy prevented you or a family member for taking a DNA test? What about sharing your genealogy research data online with practical strangers (even though you might be related)? Especially as personal DNA testing increases in popularity, and with increased media attention about cold cases solved…

While Facebook is the world's largest online social network with more than 1.2 billion users, did you know that it can be leveraged as a genealogy research "work horse" to help find your ancestors? In this session you'll go beyond the basics of setting up a Facebook account and simply...

Protecting privacy online is a continuing concern. Family historians need to decide what personal and family history information we'd like to keep private while still sharing with cousins and other researchers. Learn more about what controls online privacy and what methods and tools are available to give us the best...

Genealogy by its very nature is collaborative-we need to work together and share information with others, both relatives and non-relatives if we're to succeed in filling out our family trees. But doing family research doesn't mean giving up all semblances of personal privacy, nor is it a license to invade…

Privacy remains a huge issue for many genealogists and their family members. Personal genealogy websites, as well as Online Collaborative Trees available at Geni, MyHeritage, Ancestry, WikiTree, WeRelate, FamilySearch and OneGreatFamily, each offer different levels of privacy protections. The lecture will discuss the varied approaches to the question of privacy...

While AI (artificial intelligence) might be the current “hot” buzz word, the fact is that many genealogy vendors and even genealogists have already been using this technology for years. The AI industry is at a cross-roads and within the next five years, it will permeate almost every aspect of business and society. Learn how AI is currently being used to improve the genealogy experience, and whether or not you should seek out other uses of artificial intelligence for your own genealogy research.

More and more genealogy apps and websites, like MyHeritage, 23andMe, and Ancestry, are moving to Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) to prevent account hacking and secure user privacy. Some sites like 23andMe and MyHeritage utilize the Google Authenticator App in order to manage your 2FA account and generate the 6-digit code to gain access to your account. You’ll learn how the Two Factor Authentication concept works and see how you can enable it on your accounts to protect your privacy and data.

By now you’ve all heard about 3-2-1 computer backup. Having three copies of your data makes sense, but this relies on knowing where your data is in the first place. Is everything on your computer? What about the external drive in the closet? Or the SD cards in the drawer? Is some of your data in a cloud application, and what happens to that data if you forget to pay the subscription? I call this problem “Data Scatter” and it is the enemy of the 3-2-1 backup model. It’s hard to back up all your data if the primary copies are scattered everywhere. Let’s walk through the problem and we’ll propose a few things you can do to reign in your data and give the 3-2-1 backup model a fighting chance.

Having trouble getting SOLID and TRUSTWORTHY advice about genealogy technology? Need to purchase a new scanner, printer, or external hard-drive? Do you need more information before you move to “The Cloud” or even a VPN? Join genealogy author and educator Thomas MacEntee as he answers YOUR QUESTIONS in this LIVE…