 So the barn door has been open for a long time and a lot of you just found out you had horses So this is family tree now, and it's in the news. It's controversial and The biggest thing we have been working IT for over 20 years that I see wrong with this website is they're not charging for all the data They're aggregating now a family tree now will let you look up and then show you such things as possible relatives associated names and all kinds of other information that's somewhat personal on here now This website is like all the other ones where they aggregate information based on public data and then posted on here Most of the websites actually charge for this information. It's like I said I'm surprised that they're not but good news is after talking with several friends and following up with some reports They will let you opt out of having your information public on here So there's an opt out form and we're gonna have in this blog post here That's linked in this that you can opt out where the opt outs are now my problem with opting out is You're also verifying at some point because as you'll see with as I run through some of these some of them require email address account registrations Notaries and even your driver's license a lot of time to verify you are who you are So you actually end up giving me more data to ask them to remove the public data Now they are removing the public side of the data But they're not necessarily removing the data and that data may be by aggregating the removal process They now have more about you that they could sell to a marketing company with Proving that is verified by you verified them by opting out. I'm just trying to make people very aware of this Yes, it's kind of unnerving and a little bit disturbing to see that all of your data is here But it's something I just want to make sure people are aware of and start a discussion on it So the family tree opt out is a family tree now dot opt out This is the one that's everything's public now These ones are less public and they charge for all their lookups But if you do some digging you can find your opt out But I'm gonna save you the digging by creating a whole list of them here So this isn't tell us live in the know is your slogan where they got criminal records Identity protection employee screening and they allow a lot of aggregation of data Their business model is charging for all the data that family tree is giving away plus more because they also have some Criminal record looks up. What's a lot of that is aggregate data for things like the Offender tracking information system we have here in Michigan if you're outside of Michigan A lot of states have their own system where you can look up if there's any felonies Then another one that has a really popular for aggregate data is PQ did some digging here's their opt out now They have different remove my only my age remove my entire listing. So they got a couple different options here But once again, they're gonna want you to create an account with them to be able to do this So you're also tying an email address to the your identity and that's how pretty much all of them work here is I think you pronounce it rad aris radaris and Here's another one. They have a whole how to remove a picture how to delete specific records Then we have Spokio removing your listing from Spokio that you have to give them the URL email address send confirmation links USA people find your listing opt out They have some information in here to opt out and like said all these links will be in the blog post here We also have white pages They have an opt out information from here remove the simple from white pages, and they have instructions how you get to give them the URL They don't make these like super clickable easy. There's always several steps. You got to go through USA for people data this one is Quite a bit of information here on how to get yourself removed mailing stuff mailing information your date of birth and address to a PO box And I think you have to include this on there as well Which is a notar notarized identity verification? So you got to find a notary present some like a passport a military ID So security guard present that have a notary go through and put this on there That's pretty extensive to get your name off these lists Something else yeah now where some of this data comes from let's talk about that This is the Wayne County Register of Deeds Wayne County land records calm link will be in there as well This actually allows you to look up people's records and I threw my name in here And it turns out that a lot of people have my name and but you can look up and see details of mortgages and Lending and anything related to property with all the personal details are on there public record now for each county because it's generally a county task You can look up each person you just have to know what County they're from and this is where a lot of this data is coming They basically create robots that crawl all this data and this is one of those sources of knowledge and you start dumping all this on here This is how they get your home addresses Buildings you own and things like that another way they do and there's nothing you can really do about this There's no opting out of the Wayne County Register of Deeds It's public information that used to you had to go to the Wayne County and get a copy of and we live in an internet era Where they basically have images all the way from 1960 up till January 6th of 2017 Which means they're generally about a week behind from today's date of getting records scanned and put on here So that's how you can find out all kinds of did a building sell who owns the building who owns the taxes You can actually go to each local city and find out how much people pay taxes on building as most cities now have aggregated all your tax information and Your water bill and things like that and with verifiable information such as just their address And you can go to the city tailor and see how much taxes are on my building my house or anything else Another one is in this estate in Michigan again But each state does have generally their own the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs and I pulled up my company You can search this and right here's Lawrence Technologies Domestic profit if you ever want to verify a business you can do this and you can see my established date of 9 3 2003 that's when my company was birthed So there's my birth date number of shares I hold because we're a standard escort and you could even go through and view each one of my Yearly filings and all my public records related to that interesting though They're not the family tree now is not pulling this information It shows me living at my business, but it doesn't show me living at this address This is actually a form issue with the way they do it They show my accountants address instead of my building address on here So this is actually my accountants office over in Southgate where they mail all the stuff for my tax ID information So nonetheless, you can learn a lot about businesses whether or not they're in business Whether or not they're currently in business and whatever licenses they may have there's also different licenses for builders and things like that that you can look up which also if it's a Builder that works at her house or a entrepreneur that works out of their house and has a registered name It will list their home address if they haven't bothered to acquire an address somewhere once again public information and these crawlers go out and pull all this info and then charge You for it through these or they aggregate it together and compile it and you can search by their ID number database and things like that So I just wanted to raise some awareness of some of the places And this is as I say some of the places and this is just what's public facing for these companies selling it What you're not seeing is all the data. It's been aggregated by companies like Facebook and other marketing companies that are also using This data to target you with ads and anywhere else or that take an aggregate social media data But the best of my knowledge We did not find any way that the family tree now was aggregating social media data But some of the other companies use it as part of their source and research to create more and more detailed records I biggest thing I like to do is raise awareness of this There's not any easy solution because that's just some of the sites that aggregate data that I was able to find with a Few minutes of searching but the longer I spend searching the more sites I'm going to find that have a database of data with you in it and let's take it a step further The database is still currently being sold and picked through that our government misplaced By not having proper security and they lost anyone who's ever worked for the government since the 80s up until the 2000s in one of their massive security breaches, which was millions of people's records, which included fingerprints and that so that's also available on the Internet as well through several Places it's you have to be conscious all the time. This is why you have to monitor your credit Finding out information about someone in the internet age has been easier and easier and it's become with like family tree now We're not even charging for it is like I said the shocking part You could just go here and get data and if you want to opt out good news is like I said They've been removing it so far from talking to people in forums that have went through the removal process. I Didn't go through it. I just haven't bothered because there's so much pug of information about me because of being a business owner But apparently they are opting out it takes them roughly the four days that they said they will remove you from the listing So if you're concerned feel free to do that But you got a member when you do this You're also attaching an email address that you're verifying who you are at the same time you're doing it So it's just another I just like to make people aware. I'm not passing Judgment on this but it's the world we live in and yes You maybe trying to close the barn door, but the horse you didn't even know you had it's it's been run around for a while This is not new these websites didn't start yesterday Actually, this one has been out for a couple years It just took a long time for people to really notice family tree now and it's a trending topic So be out there be safe be vigilant and think about all the places you share your information and Be conscious of it all. Oh, if you like to content here like and subscribe