Should living individuals be included in this database? What are the HFA policies regarding living individuals?

Some people advocate the complete exclusion of living individuals from genealogy databases. But... this is highly controversial and by no means unanimous.

Some databases show only a name for a living person, but no dates, places, etc. No details. Some members of our HFA group have expressed an interest in this level of privacy.

However, many others feel just the opposite - they want to see a full and complete record and biographical sketch on their own page (its something about seeing your own web page - your name "up in lights"). Some people have expressed a strong wish to include every minute detail.

So it has been our group's policy to leave these issues up to the living individuals themselves. We can show as much or as little detail as desired:

Privacy Policy #1
It is our policy to follow the desires of living individuals with respect to what information they wish to have displayed about themselves in our database.

Furthermore, it is expected that when people submit data on other living relatives that they should acquire whatever permissions might be needed before submitting. If you are not sure, ask your relatives what their preferences are before submitting data:

Privacy Policy #2
It is always assumed that whatever information is sent as a contribution is clear to include in the database unless otherwise noted (including the submitter's name and email address, for the benefit of anyone who might want to discuss the submitted information, again unless otherwise requested; keep in mind that all email addresses shown on this site are encoded to hide them from automated spambots/harvesters).

Also:

Privacy Policy #3
It is always assumed that public records (public government vital records, Social Security Death Index, city and phone directories, already-published material, etc.) is acceptable to include in the database, unless otherwise notified.

We will of course always honor requests for privacy, so it's perfectly ok to send a data file and at the same time mention "please leave out details on Aunt Martha" [which will of course be done]. It's also easy to make changes later, so for example if you find a relative who later expresses privacy wishes (one way or another) then we can easily change the database.

We do of course try to encourage people to not get carried away with privacy concerns to the point of limiting the usefulness of our project. The first major genealogical work on our family was the book "The Hinshaw and Henshaw Families". When this work was completed in 1911 it included all details on all then-living individuals. As a result, we can today find our grandfathers listed in that book. It would have been a shame to have excluded one or two whole generations.

Our group's stated goal is to try to bring the Hinshaw and Henshaw story up-to-date (to current generations), and to then offer our collective work to various genealogy libraries "for posterity". We want our great grandchildren to be able to inherit our work and not to have to reproduce all of our hard efforts. This will not be possible if we exclude whole generations.

So moderation is probably the best compromise. It seems prudent to exclude Social Security numbers, home addresses, phone numbers, and the like (although these are often easy to get anyway from internet search engines). Some people might prefer to not show a birth date. Adoptions might be important to remain private. Most other biographical information is probably harmless and, for the sake of completeness of our work, should probably be included. But, as stated above, we will always follow the wishes of living individuals and show as much or as little as they desire.

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