Understanding Privacy at TOTA
A brief tutorial on making an article or image private to an individual or to a group on TOTA.
While we hope that TOTA members would want to share their stories with the larger TOTA community, we understand that some members will want to keep their stories private.
To keep a story private to yourself
If you have a story that you want no one other than yourself to be able to read, simply uncheck the Public box for that story. You’ll find it in the metadata panel titled Visibility. This is handy if you need to step away from TOTA before your story is finished. Unchecking the public checkbox will allow you to save what you have so far without publishing the story to the rest of TOTA.
To share a story with a specific Group
Perhaps you are a member of a family group and you have a collection of historic letters. You can upload those letters to TOTA and then mark them as private by unchecking the Public checkbox as described above. If you then also assign the story (or stories) to your family group, the letters will be visible to members of that group but not to the rest of the TOTA community. Choose the proper group from the Group menu under Visibility. Note that the list will only contain groups of which you are already a member.
Privacy and Images
The same principles work for images on TOTA, although the language is a little different. After you upload an image to TOTA, you’ll be at the Edit Image page for that image. In the middle of this page, under Caption and Citations, you can assign the image to a TOTA group.
Note that, as above, you can only do so for groups of which you are already a member, as those are the only ones that will appear on the Group dropdown. Assigning an image to a Group will cause it to appear on the Images tab for that group.
At the bottom of the page, just above the orange Update Image button, there are three checkboxes.
Checking the first, “Allow others to use this image in their articles,” will allow your image to appear in our image selection tool as something other TOTA community members can use in stories they share with TOTA. If it is left unchecked, the image will appear only in your personal image collection on your profile page and, if it is assigned to a group, in the Images collection for that group.
Checking the second, “Only allow usage and visibility to assigned group,” will hide the image from TOTA community members who are not a member of the group you have selected for the image. For instance, if you would like to share photos that feature your children with members of your family group but would like to prevent the rest of the TOTA community from seeing those photos, check this box. Only members of your group will be able to see those images on the group’s Images tab, and only members of your group would be able to use those images in a story.
The third checkbox, “Mature Content,” is available if your image contains something that some viewers might find difficult, whether that’s nudity or violence. Checking this box doesn’t hide the image but applies a warning label to it so that those who wish to avoid seeing such things can do so.
If you have additional questions about privacy on TOTA or anything else, please contact Support for assistance.
About TOTA
TOTA.world provides cultural information and sharing across the world to help you explore your Family’s Cultural History and create deep connections with the lives and cultures of your ancestors.
