I am one of those people who loves to research my family’s history. And while the Internet has been a boon to genealogy—you can find nearly anything you want—the genealogical data available online is hard to verify. So while the Internet is a great place to start for genealogy, it’s not yet the place to finish if you’re doing more in-depth research into your family history.

Living in the DC area, I do have several local spots that will give me good info. The National Archives has all the census data. The Library of Congress has a huge genealogy section. The National Genealogical Society is also good. Best of all is the Daughters of the American Revolution Library, which has a plethora of self-published books.

But for really good concrete evidence I’d have to spend a ton of money, fly out to Salt Lake City, and spend time at the Latter Day Saints (LDS) library. Unless someone out there wants to donate some cash…I ain’t going.

I could go to a local LDS Family Research Center and order microfilm and microfiche from Salt Lake City. But like a lot of people, I have fallen under the Internet age’s spell of instant gratification when it comes to finding information. A week or more of waiting: not gonna do it. And while the LDS is working on getting everything they have online, there’s only so much time in the day, and they can’t scan everything at once.

But soon there will be another way to get reliable genealogical evidence over the Web. Sorenson Companies (of video compression fame) is launching a new website called GeneTree. GeneTree is designed to help you to perform one of the most difficult genealogical tasks, which is to find other living members of your family tree (difficult because privacy considerations mean that often records on living relatives are not available—online or offline).

And how are they going to match family members? By, among other things, DNA.

Of course, this raises even more questions when it comes to privacy. Will anyone be willing to store DNA information online, where it could be hacked? The banking industry still has problems keeping our financial information away from prying eyes.

I am all for complete openess on the Internet…but is there a line everyone agrees shouldn’t be crossed? How far is too far when it comes to putting our lives online?