For fake profiles including those from movies, books, and video games, please see the Fake profiles project.

Claimed historical profiles are profiles of historical individuals on Geni.com that are claimed by a user as one's own personal account. This in turn makes it difficult to resolve duplicate profiles and is in violation of article eight (8), paragraph nineteen (19) of Geni.com's Terms of Use, "attempting to impersonate another Member or person".

Reporting claimed historical profiles

Claimed historical profiles should be reported to Geni Costumer Service. To report a profile visit the profile page and under the Actions menu, select Report and choose Claimed Historical Profile.

Customer Service will examine reported profiles and take action according to their policies. It is also helpful to provide in the comments box information that will allow Customer Service to easily verify that they are reviewing a person who cannot be a user of Geni. Consider adding a link to a relevant Wikipedia article that illustrates that the profile that you are reporting died years ago and couldn't be a current Geni user.

Distinguishing duplicate and claimed historical profiles

Just because there are duplicates of the same historic person does not necessarily indicate that the duplicate is a claimed historical profile. Remember that all claimed historical profiles are real Geni users that created their accounts pretending to be someone else who is famous. For example it is entirely possible that there might be multiple profiles of US president Abraham Lincoln and these duplicates should not be reported as claimed unless you see that a current Geni user is using the 16th US president's name, birth date, picture etc. The historical Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 and as such will not be adding profiles and be a Geni user.

Frequently asked questions

I just saw a current user named Lady Gaga. Should I report it?

Sure, although famous contemporary people can be legitimate users on geni in reality they most likely are not real users. As such, it probably doesn't hurt to report contemporary "claimed" profiles of celebrities to costumer service as well as add the profile to this project. Since site vandals or spammers occasionally hide their real name behind a celebrity by identifying them you can help identify potential malicious users. Apologies are offered in advance to Lady Gaga if she is really a Geni user:)

Will I get a notification that a profile that I've reported has been evaluated by Geni customer service?

No, there is no current mechanism to receive a notification from customer service that they have reviewed the profile you reported. You may observe though that when attempting to revisit the profile at a latter date that it will have been deleted. In some situations customer support does not delete the profile but changes the manager to "unknown."

How can I tell if a profile has been previously reported by a different user?

If you try to report a profile that has already been reported you'll get a message displayed indicating that "the profile has already been reported."

How can I tell I'm looking at a claimed historical profile?

If your looking at someone who you think is famous, who should be dead, and yet it says they "started the family tree" then you have found a profile that should be reported.

List of claimed historical profiles

• Christopher Columbus
• Lope Sánchez de Gordejuela, Urraca de León (1079 - 1126)'s fourth great grandson.
• Manoel Borges da Costa, born in 1776
• Raul de Noronha Sá Quoted as a lawyer in genealogy publication whose author died in 1919.