Is it safe? The truth about social media for family historians
You may have seen the headlines. “Facebook sells your data.” “Scammers target older users online.” “Identity theft is on the rise.” If stories like these have put you off joining any social media platform, you are certainly not alone – and your caution is not unreasonable. But there is a strong case that for family historians in particular, the benefits of getting online are substantial, and the risks – if you follow a few straightforward guidelines – are very manageable. There are strong social benefits from these platforms too because they allow you to engage with others who share your interests, from the comfort of your home. This is a real bonus if the passage of time has left you with some mobility issues.
This article is the first in a short series about how social media can really help your family history research. Before we get to the exciting part, though, we want to address the fears head-on, because they need addressing.
The single most important distinction
The first thing to understand is the difference between reading and participating. Most people assume that joining a platform like Facebook means broadcasting your life to the world. In reality, you can join, set your privacy to maximum, and spend years reading fascinating discussions, watching helpful videos, and following organisations you care about – without ever posting a single word yourself.
Think of it like attending a public meeting, or one of our Zoom talks. You do not have to contribute to benefit from being there.
What you actually need to share
To create a Facebook account, you need:
- A first name (it does not have to be your full legal name – many people use a nickname or initial for a surname)
- An email address (a free Gmail or similar address works perfectly well, and keeps your main address separate)
- A date of birth (Facebook requires you to be over 13, but it is not verified and does not need to be accurate to the day, or even the year and month)
- A password
That is genuinely it. You do not need to provide your phone number, your address, your workplace, your relationship status, or a photograph of yourself. Every field beyond the essentials is optional, and you can leave them all blank.
Locking down your privacy
Once you have created an account, the next step – before you do anything else – is to visit the Privacy Settings. On Facebook, these are found in the menu under Settings & Privacy. The key settings to change are:
- Who can see your future posts? Set this to “Only me” or “Friends” – never “Public”
- Who can send you friend requests? Set to “Friends of friends” rather than “Everyone”
- Do you want search engines to link to your profile? Turn this off
- Who can look you up using your email address or phone number? Set both to “Only me”
With these settings in place, a stranger searching for you will find nothing. Your profile will be effectively invisible to anyone you have not chosen to connect with.
Five things you never need to share
Wherever you are online, these rules will serve you well:
- Your full date of birth. Month and year are more than enough for any platform that requires it and, for extra security, you don’t even have to use your real birth date.
- Your home address. No legitimate social media platform needs to know where you live.
- Your financial details. Social media platforms will never ask for bank or card details. If something does, it is a scam.
- Your passwords. No one legitimate will ever ask for these.
- Personal details in public posts. Even in a genealogy discussion, there is no need to share information about living relatives – stick to the ancestors.
What about scammers?
Scammers do exist on social media, just as they exist on the telephone and in the post. The good news is that the tactics are easy to recognise once you know them:
- Unexpected friend requests from people you do not know, often with sparse profiles and suspiciously attractive photographs. Simply ignore them.
- Messages from “Facebook” or “your bank” telling you there is a problem with your account and asking you to click a link. Legitimate organisations do not contact you this way. Go directly to the website yourself rather than clicking any link.
- Prize notifications informing you that you have won something you never entered. Delete and move on.
The key insight is this: a scammer can only harm you if you engage with them. Ignoring an approach costs you nothing. The adage ‘If it looks too good to be true, it probably is’ is very relevant on social media.
A word about X (formerly Twitter)
X requires even less than Facebook to get started – just an email address and a username. Many people use X purely as a reading tool, following organisations and individuals whose posts interest them, without ever posting anything themselves. If the idea of Twitter-style public posting makes you uncomfortable, that is completely fine – you can follow @BerkshireFHS and other accounts of interest while remaining entirely silent. No one will know you are there. From the society’s perspective, we are present on X because organisations such as WhatsOn Reading are there too, and they frequently repost our posts, which allows us to reach a wider audience.
The bottom line
Social media is a tool, and like any tool it can be used well or badly. Used with a little care and the right privacy settings, it opens up a remarkable world of research, community, and shared enthusiasm for family history. The rest of this series will show you what that world looks like – and we think you may be pleasantly surprised.
There is a longer-term benefit worth mentioning too. Once you follow an organisation like BerksFHS on any platform, the platform itself begins to show you related content – other groups, pages, and accounts that overlap with your interests. You do not have to go looking. Over time, simply being present builds a spider’s web of connections to family history topics, local history, heritage organisations, and fellow researchers, all delivered into your feed without you having to lift a finger. What starts as following one page quietly becomes a rich and personalised window onto a world you may not have known existed.
Next issue: Following BerksFHS – what you are missing on our own channels.
