newbie admin of surname project

[rivergirl]

Penguin,
I dont know what problems your having with kit numbers or what type of project you have.
For me having a different ID number for each kit in each project would be a nightmare.
Most of my male relatives are in a Surname Project, several Haplogroup projects and Regional/Geographic projects.

I am not interested in keeping a seperate record/looking up the correct ID of each relative and/or project member when Ive never heard of a problem with the FTDNA kit numbers being shown.

Can you please expand on what the problem is and how someone has been identified.
Maybe all the FTDNA projects have missed something..

[penguin]

hi - yes, it would be a pain to have to cross reference and look up if there were seperate id numbers for each project. But that's what is needed to keep anonomity in research. The price one pays for getting to do research. In other research, people would gasp if you said the same subject who volunteered for different experiments was given the same code number across all the experiments! People think since ftdna is just a friendly little pet project, the rules of good research practice should not apply.

Problem in your case would be someone will look up all the projects you are managing, look for the overlapping ftdna kit numbers- and then they would know alot about the person-if the person took part in multiple projects, say Y dna, mtdna, and regional projecs, theyd know their paternal oldest ancestor, theyd sometimes know their mother's maiden name, and if not, at least one maternal surname, theyd know countries of origin. That's a terrible breach of privacy.

lots could be done with that info. mother's maiden name is used by many financial companies as identifying info. it also provides enuf info for someone to pretend to be a family member. It could happen even without having same number across multiple projects, but seperate numbers decreases the odds - it limits the amount of info one can gather about any one person.

if it seems paranoid, most of the laws on anonmyous research sound paranoid at first. Remember though it just takes one disaster to be a wakeup, and one person to ruin what seemed to be a nice friendly convenient system. The whole reason for using numbers instead of names is to protect privacy, but that requires random unique numbers, not non-random kit numbers recycled more than once. HIPPA seemed paranoid too.

[rivergirl]

Penquin, maybe you should rethink your decision to be in Projects and to be a Project Admin.
You seem to be the paranoid one.
Hide all your information if your so worried about it.

I do not have a problem with my MDKA information being posted or someone knowing which projects I am in.

[travers]

Problem in your case would be someone will look up all the projects you are managing, look for the overlapping ftdna kit numbers- and then they would know alot about the person-if the person took part in multiple projects, say Y dna, mtdna, and regional projecs, theyd know their paternal oldest ancestor, theyd sometimes know their mother's maiden name, and if not, at least one maternal surname, theyd know countries of origin. That's a terrible breach of privacy.

If this was ever a concern of the participant they could have simply created a new account for each new test purchased, they would have received a different kit number for each test. You can make your results private if that is what you want, if you want your results public in a way that meets your guidelines I think everyone already gave you more than enough good alternatives.

[dna]

I do not know circumstances or events that triggered the original post.

However, I have one general comment. Unfortunately, it is not possible to create the safeguards that would guarantee that people are protected from themselves.

Detailed life events are shared, allowing for an easy identification of the entire family.

Stories are presented that could be a base for a litigation.

Etc. And it is not just the forums. Profiles can direct to web pages that just stop short of including that the key is under the middle pot...

I sometimes understand desperation of adoptees, who are trying to learn anything, so they post everything they know. Then others, thinking that it is OK, do the same.

W.

P.S. I think the data should be more protected on the other end. For example, companies should not be allowed to harvest DNA data or utilize it. No demand = no problem.

[Jim Barrett]

Wouldn't it be fun to find you had a large number of matches and could not find out anything about any of them because all of the contact information was being hidden.

I do genealogy and/or genetic testing to find family. I don't even hide who am from this list.

[penguin]

@jim - Privacy and convenience always have to trade off. For research purposes, privacy has to trump convenience. A system where you contact someone without seeing their email address and they choose whether to reply should allow curious relatives to contact a match without a privacy breach of a public email address (and if you wanted to contact someone on a project if your not the admin, you can't email them directly anyway- you have to email the admin and let them know the kit number you are interested in- again if it was a randomly generated or other sensible unique number, that system might be ok).

@rivergirl - You should take the Human Subjects Training course at CITI or elsewhere. Indeed, a strong position would be that no one should be allowed to be an adminstrator unless they pass that course. People who treat this as a game rather than legitimate research subject to the same rules as getting IRB permission for human subjects testing, should stick to watching sunday football or taking up badmitton for their weekend frivolities and pastimes. Leave research to the researchers.

other comments will get to as soon as i can

[dna]

There is one fundamental difference. Here, the researchers are the subjects of their own research.

W.

[rivergirl]

Penguin,
Your the one having all the paranoia problems.
How many projects are there at FTDNA, and for how many years. No problems.

You still have not told us exactly how someone found out the identity of a project member. Did they post too much of their own information??

If you want your project private, then make it private, and leave the rest of us out of your paranoia.
I hope you have plenty of time to co-ordinate all the emails for your members.

[penguin]

@dna - that's definitely something worth considering in the mix. But often, its the administrators (or others) that are doing the research that goes far beyond what the volunteer is doing- they just sign up for a project the way an undergrad might sign up for an experiment- still requires protection.

on the comments to just make it private that a few people have offered- i'm not sure the solution is to just throw up ones hands in defeat and say ok, never mind then, no one can see anything. its still best if data- raw stripped data is there for everyone to learn from and research - , but sensitive information of any kind is blocked. This all requires some thought. fortuntely, we don't entirely have to reinvent the wheel. so many rules on how to protect privacy in research settings exist

@rivergirl = i said in a previous post that i was looking to reconstruct how the person found the same id number on multiple projects, and then was able to reconstruct who they must be based on mothers and fathers' lines - but you can probably see the logic of how its done already. Or most people can see the logic anyway. Mostly though, you need to educate yourself. If you look at the last two courses on the CITI website pasted below, they may help you. one module is on Responsible Conduct of Research and the other is on Human Subjects Research. Or if you just are interested in family reunions, then just hold one of those and stop pestering the grownups

https://www.citiprogram.org/index.cfm?pageID=265

[flanged]

All good.

Our project started in 2002 and I tested in 2008.
I stepped up as co-admin just few years ago.

PAs uphold the FTDNA ethic of not divulging any identifying details.

Our project fosters communication between our members.
The project members choose what details they want to publish on our public site.
We have a lineages page for those members that want to share their family history. We don't show names or dates for living people.

You have 4 public web pages available. Go for it!

Cheers