Warn as many folks as possible who use the big family tree site Ancestry, about an immoral danger there. This affects folks all over the world. I have saved all info + contacts ready to get thrown out of Ancestry for campaigning on this. Would you support an online petition on it?
Here is the danger. If you get sent an invitation for access to a tree, you can only accept it once and then it is gone. But if by accident a different user account, not your own, is signed in on the computer where you are accepting from, your acceptance will go to that different account. The acceptance of your invitation can actually go to the wrong person, there is nothing to make sure it only goes to you. You will not know this can happen before it does. Then after it has happened, that's it, the invitation is gone.
When there isn't a username to give but the member is traceable from other details, support will go in 5 days from "if you could call us on... with the username for the owner of this tree once we verify your account details we can accept this invite for you" to "Unfortunately our privacy policy does not allow us to contact that member on your behalf nor to have the invitation resent to you". This is negligence. No explanation even of why they should have such a privacy policy. Only if you are a full paying member have you any means at all to initiate a contact. This includes if you do a member search on the inviter's real name - you can only find them if they have a public tree, and then if you find them you can't message them unless you are a paying member. But many folks who are free Ancestry users without knowing it's possible for this situation to happen, may not be able to become paying members even if they want to - because only folks with bank cards can do it, and nowadays it's surprising who may not have one, I have seen a bank not want to give one to an old lady with no debt history at all. Anyone without a bank card, using Ancestry without knowing this can happen, could be left totally powerless to contact an inviter whose invitation gone to the wrong Ancestry account. Nor will the inviter will know it has happened.
This is a breach of service to the inviter too. What are you paying for, if this can happen to your invitations and you would not know it? This will leave cousins cruelly cut off from each other, by accident, after Ancestry momentarily let them know each other existed. My lost invitation was exceptionally warmly worded: "With thanks in anticipation. Warmest regards Your cousin." But for the luck that (1) I have a bank card and (2) discovered he belongs to another site too, I could now be utterly cut off from that cousin with no way to let him know this happened, with Ancestry not caring and not explaining any sensible reason for refusing to tell him.
SHARE THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW WHO DOES TREE SITES. If a paying user of Ancestry, demand safeguards before you will stay with them.
Maurice Frank
Thursday, November 27, 2014
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Action for Botton
A friend of ELAS from that region told us about the present shocking story of use of power in a charity to wind down a long-running support community for a mixture of autistic and learning disabled residents,Botton Village, www.actionforbotton.org/. Though the Botton story is in England, the entirely discretionary insecure nature of charity regulation is equally a concern here.
No matter how corrupt the goings on in any charity, OSCR (Office of Scottish Charity Regulator) has the power to choose whether it regards it as serving "public interest" to bother to do anything. The mere fact that an offence has happened in a charity, a supposedly legally binding constitution has been ignored, does not oblige them to do anything about it. e.g. Even an actual case where a charity closed a bank account belonging to a mental health advocacy group, seized it contents, and only informed the group after doing it, ignoring its constitution, OSCR declined to pursue. Likewise, the Charity Commission there described itself as having the power to "feel" whether or not a case requires its response. Thus:
"Your enquiry will now be assessed. If we feel that the issues do not fall within our regulatory remit you may not receive a response from us. However, if the issues raised fall within our regulatory remit we will aim to respond to you within 15 working days from receipt. Please do not send us a paper version unless we have specifically requested this." Thankfully the news from the Botton site is that the Commission has been induced by sufficient opinion to "take a fresh look at" it: www.actionforbotton.org/Betrayal-of-Trust/Breaches-of-trust
The Charity Commission guidance states:
"A power to expel a member must be exercised in good faith and not capriciously and the basic requirements of a right to be told the nature and details of the offence and reasons for the expulsion or suspension, a right to notice of the hearing and a right for the members to put his case are well accepted". But as the Botton campaign describes: "In 2012 they managed to alter the charity constitution by threatening every member with expulsion if they voted against a key proposal, as a consequence of which the board now has only independent trustees and nobody left to represent Camphill co-workers and their values."
www.facebook.com/action4botton
>Maurice Frank
No matter how corrupt the goings on in any charity, OSCR (Office of Scottish Charity Regulator) has the power to choose whether it regards it as serving "public interest" to bother to do anything. The mere fact that an offence has happened in a charity, a supposedly legally binding constitution has been ignored, does not oblige them to do anything about it. e.g. Even an actual case where a charity closed a bank account belonging to a mental health advocacy group, seized it contents, and only informed the group after doing it, ignoring its constitution, OSCR declined to pursue. Likewise, the Charity Commission there described itself as having the power to "feel" whether or not a case requires its response. Thus:
"Your enquiry will now be assessed. If we feel that the issues do not fall within our regulatory remit you may not receive a response from us. However, if the issues raised fall within our regulatory remit we will aim to respond to you within 15 working days from receipt. Please do not send us a paper version unless we have specifically requested this." Thankfully the news from the Botton site is that the Commission has been induced by sufficient opinion to "take a fresh look at" it: www.actionforbotton.org/Betrayal-of-Trust/Breaches-of-trust
The Charity Commission guidance states:
"A power to expel a member must be exercised in good faith and not capriciously and the basic requirements of a right to be told the nature and details of the offence and reasons for the expulsion or suspension, a right to notice of the hearing and a right for the members to put his case are well accepted". But as the Botton campaign describes: "In 2012 they managed to alter the charity constitution by threatening every member with expulsion if they voted against a key proposal, as a consequence of which the board now has only independent trustees and nobody left to represent Camphill co-workers and their values."
www.facebook.com/action4botton
>Maurice Frank
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
None out of 3
Besides an NAS social group discriminatorily only for aged under 35, and how is that legal? there is still no adult aspie support in Clackmannanshire. The Forth Valley's position with small council areas has left it as a void in the national coverage, left on the sidelines whle the bigger more prominent conurbations get to set up services. What about a job placing service equivalent to Edinburgh's Intowork, which should be particularly important in this economically oppressive era?
The services that Autism Initiatives has developed in a wide spread across Scotland, Borders, Perth, Highlands, are being missed in the Forth Valley. The perception of why is alarming. It is perceived locally there, that the local dominance by Scottish Autism, headquartered in Alloa, is a discouragement to AI from setting up any projects in the Forth Valley void. That the 3 national autism charities are behaving territorially with each other, allowing each other to be the big boy in certain localities and not intervening in their patch.
Who does that fail to help? The autistic folks ourselves, who are supposed to be the point of all 3 charities' existence. If SA has not set something up in that locality, which AI can set up and has done in many other places, then AI should. Ain't that common sense?
Unless the charities function by common sense and not by mutual politicking, all their supporters and donors must ask themselves who the charities actually care about? Whose interests they work in?
Maurice Frank
The services that Autism Initiatives has developed in a wide spread across Scotland, Borders, Perth, Highlands, are being missed in the Forth Valley. The perception of why is alarming. It is perceived locally there, that the local dominance by Scottish Autism, headquartered in Alloa, is a discouragement to AI from setting up any projects in the Forth Valley void. That the 3 national autism charities are behaving territorially with each other, allowing each other to be the big boy in certain localities and not intervening in their patch.
Who does that fail to help? The autistic folks ourselves, who are supposed to be the point of all 3 charities' existence. If SA has not set something up in that locality, which AI can set up and has done in many other places, then AI should. Ain't that common sense?
Unless the charities function by common sense and not by mutual politicking, all their supporters and donors must ask themselves who the charities actually care about? Whose interests they work in?
Maurice Frank
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