Password Protection

Knowing you can secure part or all of your journals gives you peace of mind when writing your memoirs. Are you a public or a private person? Perhaps a little of both? We provide you with the ability to use as few as one and as many as three different passwords to help manage your site...

1. Log-On Password (required) — this is the password you use when you log onto your biography. You should never give this to anyone. Once logged on you can write new entries, edit or delete existing entries, upload or delete photos and video, rename chapters and create sub-chapters, respond to comments & reviews, add people to your family tree, approve or remove connections, send email to your family & friends, and much, much more.

2. Bio Password (optional, free) — do you want your biography to be viewable by anyone, or just by your approved family and friends? The Bio Password means that for people to view your biography they will need to enter a password or be in your family tree or on your approved connections list. Thus, only those people whom you approve as family or friends, and only those you give the password to are able to view your biography. This is different than the Log-On Password in that the Bio Password just lets people look at your biography and write comments to you, but does not allow anyone to write, add, edit or delete anything.

3. Journal Password (optional, free) — regardless of whether your biography is open to the public, or available only to people who are connected to you, or who have your Bio Password, there may be things you write which you want to keep private from everyone. This is easy to do with our special Journal Password feature! Whenever you write a new entry you will see two options at the bottom of the page; "Publish this Entry" and "Password Protect this Entry". Choose "Password Protect" and nobody will be able to see that entry, not even those people who you have connected with or otherwise given your Bio Password to... that specific entry is not viewable by anyone but yourself unless you give them this special third password).

Special Feature: Family Tree Auto Log-On — whenever you personally add someone to your family tree, the system recognizes you as the administrator for that persons profile. This is done by matching the email address in your account with the email address in the family members account; if they are the same, then as long as you are logged in on your account you will automatically log onto that account regardless of the password simply by clicking on the family members name in either your Family Tree or in a list of search results. This is done to make it easy for you to add biographical facts, stories, pictures and scrapbook items to that persons site. However, this presents a little bit of a double-edged sword in that if you want to give someone else access to a family members site, we suggest you first log onto the profile, click on "Bio Summary" and change the default email address to something other than the one in your account; otherwise someone logging onto that profile would be able to automatically log onto your profile and change or delete things on your site.

How do people request profile and/or journal passwords? The system lets people send you requests to connect to you as a family or a friend. These appear in the "Connections" management area and a "New" icon will flash whenever you have requests waiting for your approval. If you approve a request, and if your biography is password protected, then that person will automatically able to see your biography (if the person does not have a biography of their own then the system will email them your Bio Password if you approve them). Regarding your Journal Password, this is the most private thing and, thus, there is no automated way to send it to people — if you want someone to have the password which lets them see your protected journal entries then the only way for them to get it is for you to directly give it to them.