my name

Profile Mentioned is an example of Public Profile for living person, with name plus place and date of birth -- for this profile and many others seen if click "View Tree".

Not everybody is happy to see info about themselves displayed this way. In this case, apparently the reaction is just to correct the name(s), with no fury over the Public display of the info.

Lois, if you (or anyone) feel that another Geni user is publishing private information without your permission, you have two choices:

1. Use the "Contact Profile Manager" link on that profile to request that the manager remove the offending information

2. Use the "Report" link on the Actions pull-down menu and choose Privacy as the reason. These reports are handled by our Customer Service team.

Mike -

when you say "if you (or anyone) feel that another Geni user is publishing private information without your permission, you have two choices:" -- does this actually apply to me in this case where none of the Profiles I saw were in any way related to me, never mind of me?

Certainly, they did not have "my permission" - but can I report it simply because I disapprove of folks making other people's info Public. And if not, can I only report it if it is of me, or what criteria apply?

It's a fair question, Lois. In general our CS team would look for the person reporting the problem to have more of a claim over the information on the profiles in question, than the person who published / manages those profiles.

You personally wouldn't likely pass that criterion in this case, so if CS took any action it would probably be to check in with the manager to make sure he/she intended to make the profiles public; something you could do yourself with the Contact Manager link, if you chose. There's an infinite variety of scenarios and we deal with each of them on a case by case basis.

Mike, one problem is that once one person has reported a profile for any reason, no-one else can report that profile for any reason. So one person may make a report with no basis, and that blocks any other genuine report.

Yes you can Contact Profile Manager, and this should always be encouraged as the first action., It's the cases where the Profile Manager isn't responsive that need handling better through the reporting mechanism.

I'm just curious - can't Christopher just claim the profile? Once he's done that, he could correct the last name and make the profile private. Or am I missing something?

This is new territory for me, but I'm remembering that I added my sister and mother, both of whom responded to the Geni invitation and claimed their profiles. They didn't have to contact me as the Profile Manager. In fact, I didn't know either one of them had responded til afterwards! If I'm not understanding how this works, please educate me?

Jennifer -

in order for your sister and mother to respond to the Geni invitation, someone (probably you!?!) had to enter their e-mail address on their profile (or someplace; on Profile was how I have always done it).

I am guessing the manager of the profile does not know Christopher or Christopher's e-mail address -- in any case, pretty certain his e-mail address was not entered/ no invite has been sent. Therefore no, Christopher cannot "just claim the profile".

Aha! Thanks, Lois, I suspected I was missing something! Geni got ahold of my family's email addresses when I clicked on the "invite friends" option - I then had to give permission for Geni to access my email account. It matched up names in my email address book with names of my family members on Geni. All that sort of took place in the background, as far as I was concerned, so thank you for your reminder about how that worked.

I'm pretty sure that Christopher can claim the profile with help from Geni admin. I think I remember seeing someone else doing just that in a discussion thread, and getting help with the situation...

Private User Christopher, if you'll change your profile (the Christopher Pamment one) to a PUBLIC profile instead of Private, I can merge it with the Christopher Hughes profile. Then you'll have the ability to change the name, put it back to private, or do whatever else you want to do with it. How does that sound? ;-)

Jennifer - I think Christopher would have difficulty turning his personal claimed profile public.

My idea would be to put Christopher's email address in the other Christopher profile. Geni would then recognise the profiles are the same person with same email address.
Otherwise get Geni admin help.

Thanks, David, I already tried to add the email address but I can't. I suspect it's because I'm not in the family group...

Jennifer

I think it's more because you don't manage the Christopher Hughes profile
that you can't add the email address. I take it that the real Christopher has communicated his email address to you privately? Either way, this will I believe work in the general case.

Give the C Hughes profile a dummy duplicate brother. Merge the two "brothers". You will then be a co-manager. Invite Christopher to that profile with his email address. When Christopher accepts the invite, Geni should recognise the two Christophers are the same.

Considering that Christopher did NOT object to the Profile being Public, but rather sent in a name correction, perhaps he would rather keep his Separate Private Profile and just see this with minimal info but corrected name!