Irish Genealogical and Historical Society (IGHS)

The Society is setting up a centre in Donegal for Irish research and to start with is creating a virtual research centre on the web. To get there click on www.irishresearch.net/genealogy/. The idea is to attract people to contribute gedcoms, which can then be hosted on the Society's search engine. The gedcoms will create separate trees but the main search list will be created from all the trees. No one will have access to edit or change the data received from the contributor. Don't worry if you have living people in your gedcom; to protect privacy, the website's default is set up to allow only searches for deceased people.

 

I'm sure this is a brilliant project and is run to the highest standards by amazing people. I have no experience of the site other than first impressions after following the link. But uploading your full Gedcom to anyone shouldn't be done without careful thought. Privacy of your and other peoples data needs to be taken seriously.

Their website doesn't fill me with confidence. They seem to be giving out mixed messages. On the one hand they say don't edit your gedcom to remove living people, send us the whole thing. But then they also give the following (good) advice which says be very careful about what you send us ...

Then later there is more advice from other people saying be careful about the privacy of your gedcoms!

The final line on the page says in bold

Good advice.

Statements like this make me wary as well...

What?

Another perhaps minor point but worth considering: Their site seems to be hosted in the US. You just need to be aware that different countries have different policies on data access.

 

Just noticed. A Cat and Dog on the same page.

We were bound to disagree

 

I don't disagree, not really. But I do have full confidence in the people running this site, even if they are in America (and Ireland). Is it too much to ask contributors to check their notes and sources? From the family trees I've seen I can vouch for the fact that living people are not included.