Understand the conservative rule
The default privacy mode treats an individual as potentially living unless the record contains a death declaration or death-date structure. It does not assume that a very old birth year proves death, and it preserves uncertain date expressions rather than converting them into invented exact dates. You can mark additional individual IDs private.
A private person keeps a generic name and supported family links. Privacy mode also removes notes, sources, media references, custom fields and ancillary records throughout the exported subset. Events on families connected to a private person are removed. These choices reduce common disclosure paths but intentionally sacrifice research context.
Review indirect identifiers
Names are only one way a genealogy file can identify someone. Stable record IDs, family connections, a distinctive place and the facts of a deceased relative can reveal a living person. A name embedded in another person’s name or place field may also remain. No automatic rule can determine the intended recipient’s background knowledge.
Read the prepared person list and examine the exported GEDCOM before sharing it. Consider whether the relationship structure itself is appropriate to disclose. If the purpose is only to explain a research method, a synthetic example may be better than a real family subset. The workbench does not certify that a file is anonymous or compliant with a particular legal regime.
Choose source preservation deliberately
Turning privacy off keeps reachable source, note and media records where their references remain in scope. That mode is useful for a trusted research handoff, but it can carry names, addresses, document paths and sensitive notes. It should be an intentional choice made after considering the recipient and purpose.
The audit states which policy was used and records removed references. Keep it with the handoff, while reviewing whether even the IDs in that audit should be shared. Your source file is never changed, so you can make a different selection later without losing information from the master archive.