 My name's Leanne Cooper and I've been a WikiTree member for about four years. I've created this presentation series called Welcome to WikiTree to highlight some of the key features of WikiTree and to share why it's such an important tool in my genealogy toolbox. All opinions expressed throughout this series are my own. Privacy is the biggest concern that most people have about putting information online. In this video I'll be discussing how privacy works on WikiTree. WikiTree is a free online collaborative family tree. For a general overview of WikiTree and a discussion about collaborative family trees in general, please be sure to check out the first two videos of this series. WikiTree is designed to balance privacy and collaboration so that living people can connect on a global family tree to common ancestors. In this video and the next one I'll be diving deeper into these two keywords, privacy and collaboration. Different online trees handle privacy in different ways. On many sites, privacy is an all-or-nothing approach where your whole tree is public or private and on a public tree, living people are shown as private or as a living person with no other information provided. WikiTree is a bit more nuanced. On WikiTree you set the privacy setting for each profile. WikiTree's privacy system is based on what's called trusted lists. People on the trusted list have full viewing and editing rights on the profile. What users outside of the trusted list can see and do depends on the privacy level of that profile. There are seven different privacy settings to choose from. On the most restrictive end, a profile can be unlisted where there is absolutely no public information available. It won't even show up on a search. This setting is used for living people who are not WikiTree members. Next is private. This setting includes very limited public information including the name and decade of birth and death, but a little else. Only someone from the trusted list can view or edit the profile. At the other end are open profiles where anybody can view the profile and any member who has signed the Honor Code can edit it. Profiles for people who were born over 150 years ago or who died over 100 years ago must be set to open. Though this can also be used for any deceased person where there is no impact on the privacy of a living person. And of course there are several options in between. Let's look at an example. This is the profile of my father who is deceased. I've written a full profile of him including information about his childhood, his career, his interests and hobbies. As well I have information on his parents, his siblings, his spouse, his children and I've included several photos. However, my father's profile includes information about my mother who is very much alive. I want to make sure her privacy is protected while allowing my close family to see and contribute to what I've written about my dad. What you see here is the view of my father's profile that close family can see. Clicking on the privacy tab takes you to the privacy page for this profile. I set the privacy level for my father's profile to private with public family tree. That way the narrative information that I included which includes information about my mother remains private but anyone can view his family tree. Other living people in the tree can still be private. On the privacy page I can also add or remove people from the trusted list. On my father's profile my mother, my sister and I are all on the list along with a couple of my cousins. Any of us can see and edit any of the information on my father's profile. Anyone else sees the public view of the profile. Here is the public view of my father's profile. His full name is not provided, just the name he went by nor is his exact birth and death dates and locations. You do see that he was born in the 1930s and died in the 2000s so you're not going to mistake this Bill Cooper for another Bill Cooper born in the 1800s for example. As well you see his deceased siblings but private sister for his sister who's still living. There is no link to my mother's profile. For his children you see my name since my profile is not private and you see my eldest sister's who's deceased. You do not see my other sister's name as her profile is private. Because his tree is public you can see the ancestors and descendants buttons and a link to more tools so you can view his full tree. You wouldn't see these things if the family tree were also private. In place of the biography section of the profile on the bottom left you see what information is included on his profile but to see the actual information you have to ask me to be added to the trusted list. If you've been on WikiTree for a while it might be a good idea to review the privacy levels of the profiles that you've created in the past. To do so you can go to the bulk privacy level changes page. There's a link to this page from the privacy page of any profile that you manage. On this page you will see the privacy level of every profile on your watch list and you can make bulk changes if appropriate. It's important to remember that the purpose of the privacy settings is to protect the privacy of living people. It is not about control. If you're having a disagreement with a distant cousin about what should be included on your third-grade grandfather's profile for example you do not use privacy settings to restrict access. That goes against the WikiTree Honor Code. There are other ways of resolving these conflicts which I'll touch on in the video on collaboration. The goal is to keep profiles as open as possible while respecting privacy. As I mentioned earlier all profiles of people born over 150 years ago or who died over 100 years ago must be set to open. But that doesn't mean that they're the only ones that can have an open profile. Anyone deceased can have an open profile if there are no privacy concerns of living people. Remember nothing on the internet is ever completely private. Despite a robust privacy policy and approach on WikiTree data breaches can happen and law enforcement can subpoena information. So if you have a deep dark family secret that you wouldn't want getting out you're best keeping it off the internet altogether. And it's always good practice to examine your own privacy habits. For example I never use my mother's maiden name or my father's birthplace as a security word or a password as anyone can easily find that information about me. You can answer those questions just having watched this video. So I always choose security words that are completely unrelated to my family history. That brings us to the end of this video. In this presentation I focused on privacy. In other videos in this series I present the key features of WikiTree, discuss pros and cons, and give some tips for getting started. I provide an overview of collaborative family trees in general and how they differ from individual family trees. And I talk about how we collaborate on WikiTree. If you have suggestions for other topics you'd like to see me address please leave a comment. I hope to see you on WikiTree.