Updated privacy on Geni.com

We recently updated the way privacy works on Geni. These new, simpler privacy rules are designed to provide more privacy for your close relatives, while enabling greater collaboration on historical profiles.

You manage the privacy of the profiles you’ve added to your family tree. Under the new system, profiles you’ve added — out to your third great grandparents and fourth cousins — have become private profiles. Private profiles are profiles that only your family and friends can view. They are not included in our public search index, and only your family can edit them. For most users, this provides greater privacy for their close relatives.

Because your more distant ancestors have many descendants, there are probably other Geni users also related to these profiles. In order to enable greater collaboration on these profiles, they have become public profiles. Public profiles can be viewed by anyone, and will be included in our public search index. However, only your collaborators will be able to edit them.

Note: No living profiles have been made public as part of this change.

We hope that this makes the distinction between the public and private parts of your tree, and between your family and your collaborators, more clear. We’re excited to continue to work together towards our goal of solving genealogy by creating a family tree of the whole world.

For more information on this change, view our new Understanding
privacy on Geni.com page.