Freebase is a collection of all kinds of information, including information about people, companies, and so forth. We gather information from a range of sources, including online databases, government records, news sources, and contributions from the Freebase community.
Our scope is broad -- far broader than Wikipedia, for example -- so we don't necessarily limit ourselves to "famous" or "notable" people. For instance, we have imported records related to public companies in the US, including their boards of directors, which we obtain from publicly available SEC records. This means that anyone who is a board member of a public company may have a topic in Freebase. Similarly, any author, however minor, may have a topic page in Freebase on account of our loading book data, or any musical artist may have a topic page because of a load from MusicBrainz.
In addition to this, the Freebase community are welcome to develop bases around any subject that interests them, and fill in data related to that subject. This means that, for instance, people from Vancouver might be added to Freebase by the members of the Vancouver Base, or researchers in the field of computer science might be added to the Computer Science Base.
What kinds of information Freebase collects
Freebase is primarily interested in "facts": simple pieces of information which we collect in a structured way. Facts can include such things as a person's:
- date of birth
- place of birth
- gender
- employment history
- parents, siblings, children
- religion, ethnicity, nationality
- education
For each topic in Freebase, we also have a textual description (usually a paragraph or so of information, often taken from Wikipedia), and may also have one or more images, which are obtained from Wikipedia or other sources under appropriate licenses, or uploaded by our community.
How to correct information in Freebase
Anyone may edit Freebase topic pages. Simply click on any of the "edit" buttons near the information in question, and change the information as you require. (You will need to sign up for a Freebase account to do this, but it's free, and we won't spam you.)
If you find that we have your birthday wrong, or our links point to an outdated website, or we haven't listed your educational attainments correctly, then you can easily fix the problem for yourself.
You can also add missing information, provide a picture, and more.
But I want to be removed from Freebase entirely!
If you are a private individual and don't wish your information to be in Freebase, we are happy to remove it.
To have your topic page removed, please:
- Click on the flag icon near your name on the page
- Choose "Flag for delete"
- Now go to the discussions on the page, and leave us a note explaining that you are the subject of the page in question, and would like it deleted.
However, if you are a public figure, the community may vote to keep your topic on Freebase. Even if it were to be deleted, it might be recreated at any time by another data load or community contribution. If you are a public figure, we recommend that instead of trying to have your topic page on Freebase deleted, you treat it as an opportunity to share your achievements and provide factual information to those who are interested in you and your work.
What not to do
Attempts to remove your topic by renaming it, deleting all facts on the page, or similar manoeuvres will most likely be interpreted as vandalism by the Freebase community. Please follow the deletion procedure outlined above.
Is Freebase's storage of personal information a privacy violation? Can it lead to identity theft?
In order to be in Freebase, the information we have about you was most likely public already. However, if you don't wish it to be readily available in this particular form, you are welcome to edit your topic page as described above.
We also recommend against using information such as date of birth, mother's maiden name, etc as security questions for any service or institution. Even if your personal information is not available on the Internet, people can still find such information from public records.
What to do if someone is harrassing you by posting personal information on Freebase
Harrassment of any individual is against Freebase's Terms of Service. If any Freebase user is posting personal information about you in order to harrass you, please let us know and we'll deal with it.
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