As trendy as genealogy is these days, there are a bunch of websites that make it easy for the average person to get started tracing their family tree.  Most of these sites require a membership fee - or at least make you sign up for a free trial membership.  However, there is a site that allows anyone and everyone to search public data for free and you may want to learn more about it to control your privacy.

The site is called Familytreenow.com and they offer free searches that actually return important data about the individuals you look up.  Search results return full names, birth years, known relatives, even verified addresses from their entire life.  Now we should point out that all of this data is public record and there isn't a law that prevents the company from providing yours to anyone who searches for it.  However, the site does make it all neatly available in one location - allowing someone who might have nefarious intent to obtain it.

So how do you stop it?  It's easy.  Just visit the website. Click the "privacy" link at the bottom of the page.   Search on yourself.  Click into the results for your name and then click the "opt out" link.   The website will remove your information from the public search within 48 hours.

 

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