[edit] Welcome to the Muscatelli Research Center
Security
From Muscatelli Genealogy Wiki
See also Muscatelli Genealogy Wiki:Privacy policy
Security is one of the most important and yet complicated parts of Muscatelli Genealogy Wiki. Sharing your genealogical tree is a great idea until you think about the nightmare of everyone being able to see your private information. But without adding your own information, wonderful charts like a Pedigree or Circular Descendent Chart are disappointing at best and useless at worst. Many of the benefits of the Muscatelli Genealogy Wiki is finally being able to get a good picture of your nieces and nephews, cousins, and great uncles.
Contents |
[edit] Goals
- Share as much information as possible
- Secure all data
[edit] What needs to be secured
[edit] SSN
This piece of information is probably the most crucial information to keep secure. Our guideline is to NEVER store Social Security Numbers for living individuals. It's not necessary and is only available to record dead people from the Social Security Death Index.
[edit] Date/Place of birth
Only people related to you can get this. If a close relative wants it, there are much easier ways to get it like a nephew can ask their parent.
[edit] Mother's maiden name
Even though a mother may be publically available, her living children will remain private.
[edit] Parents' identiy
Some people could be ashamed of their heritage for a variety of reasons. While they are living, their name is not searcheable except for people who are related (and have the same identity already).
[edit] How do we verify relationships?
The security above relies on people being related or not related. SharedTree uses a variety of mechanisms to ensure people who are NOT related to you are actually related to you.
- Track additions - each time a User claims to be a Person, we track that. If a User changes identity more than twice we flag that User as family hopping and a possible hacker.
- Track views - Everytime a user views a data record we track that and display it on the users screen. We may consider emailing a daily report to users.
- Limitations - because of the limited size of the Family Tree Index, any single user can only access a limited amount of low quality identity data in the first place.
- Ad hoc restrictions - A User may block another related User from viewing their Person data (FUTURE).
- Opt-out - A User may opt out of the Muscatelli Genealogy Wiki altogether (FUTURE). This is only as a last resort in very bizarre cases.
