Protect yourself, your family: FamilyTreeNow lists personal info

Link walks you through 4 steps to remove yourself from site

Earlier this week, we told you about True People Search, which has the power to reveal a lot of your personal information online.

Now seems like a good time to chat about FamilyTreeNow, which seems just as invasive and revealing as True People Search.

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The site, which is a geneology research aid, provides not only your current and past addresses and phone numbers, but specifically, your relatives’ -- including your kids’ names. Granted, the website isn’t a perfect science, so it’s possible that not all your information is accessible.

Still, it returns results on your “possible associates,” and all the results can be accessed by the public, for free and on perma-linkable pages, the site mom.me points out.

This isn’t exactly new, this concept of being able to look up someone’s personal information. But what makes it a little nerve-racking is how easy the process is. You don’t have to register. You don’t have to log in. The site doesn’t make you enter a credit card or start a subscription.

There are a ton of sites that aggregate personal data — Spokeo, Lexis Nexis, Ancestry — but none make it this easy, open and shareable, mom.me said.

However, just like True People Search, you can opt out of a public listing. Here’s a link from FamilyTreeNow that outlines those four steps you’ll need to take.

Now you know.