Caution to geneaologists

[skauwt]

Not only that, but it's also a bit "unsportsmanlike" among the genealogical community to deliberately withold information from others. I've known people who have denied access to public records in their possession simply for spite, and many a researcher couldn't use those sources in their research.

You may have a beef with ancestry, fair enough, but do you have a beef with all of its users enough to hurt someone in their efforts to trace their ancestry?

T.

i had a issue on genes reunited where i let a women share my data ,id been new to the site and didn't notice at the time i could set it in a way that living persons where censored to the other folk ,
this one lady copied my entire tree including my nephews and nieces , it took me 3 weeks for this women to remove the data from her tree she copied over 400 names at that time and the only connection she had was her great great great great grandfathers brother married my great time 4 grandmothers sister not a blood connection at all and no need to copy what she had
when i did get it took off she was rather abusive and started all this religious spiel that we are all family and so on
but i wasnt having any of it

to this date i dont know if she still has the data she could have easily downloaded a gedcom and deleted the information from the site without my knowledge for all i know she could be selling the names of my nephews and nieces to foreigners in fake passports yeah perhaps a long shot but something thats more common than folk think

so i can agree completely with CDNSushi if you want your data removed for any reason you shouldn't need to threaten legal action regardless of whose missing out

[CDNSushi]

The way I see it is this. I am not a paid agent of Ancestry.com. Therefore, any "work" I do in putting up my family's tree is my work, owned by me and should then be revokable if I don't like or agree with the company's terms. I am not being remunerated by them...

If what I provide is indeed public record, well then let Ancestry.com go and track down and publish those public records themselves. I am sympathetic if someone feels like they are missing out, but I would say then that their beef should be with Ancestry.com and not with me.

[Tobus]

Therefore, any "work" I do in putting up my family's tree is my work, owned by me and should then be revokable if I don't like or agree with the company's terms.

That's easily answered by what terms you agreed to when you joined the site. You know the one - it's all that stuff that most people don't read before hitting the "I agree" button. If they stated that any information you put on there becomes theirs (i.e. you don't have any legal right to make them remove it), you may be out of luck.

Surely their lawyers put some sort of language in the terms & conditions from the very start to prevent them from facing legal trouble later...

[macwilkin]

The way I see it is this. I am not a paid agent of Ancestry.com. Therefore, any "work" I do in putting up my family's tree is my work, owned by me and should then be revokable if I don't like or agree with the company's terms. I am not being remunerated by them...

If what I provide is indeed public record, well then let Ancestry.com go and track down and publish those public records themselves. I am sympathetic if someone feels like they are missing out, but I would say then that their beef should be with Ancestry.com and not with me.

You're missing the point, though: ancestry is just the delivery vehicle. YOU are the one, for whatever reason, who is removing research that others may benefit from. Is that your right? Yes, I suppose it is. But remember that genealogists have an unwritten code of sorts: if you ask for help, then give it in return. By posting on Ancestry, you are asking others to help you in filling in the gaps, and no doubt others would benefit from from your research.

Whether you like it or not, YOU are the one denying others genealogical information because you disagree with Ancestry's policies. Don't make Ancestry the straw man here and try to shift the blame to them.

Of course, that's your business if you want to pull the information down. I'm just telling you how such actions are viewed in the genealogy community.

T.

[macwilkin]

i had a issue on genes reunited where i let a women share my data ,id been new to the site and didn't notice at the time i could set it in a way that living persons where censored to the other folk ,
this one lady copied my entire tree including my nephews and nieces , it took me 3 weeks for this women to remove the data from her tree she copied over 400 names at that time and the only connection she had was her great great great great grandfathers brother married my great time 4 grandmothers sister not a blood connection at all and no need to copy what she had
when i did get it took off she was rather abusive and started all this religious spiel that we are all family and so on
but i wasnt having any of it

to this date i dont know if she still has the data she could have easily downloaded a gedcom and deleted the information from the site without my knowledge for all i know she could be selling the names of my nephews and nieces to foreigners in fake passports yeah perhaps a long shot but something thats more common than folk think

so i can agree completely with CDNSushi if you want your data removed for any reason you shouldn't need to threaten legal action regardless of whose missing out

I'm sorry that happened to you, but in my experience as a genealogical librarian, the majority of folks in the hobby are just ordinary people searching for their roots, and do not have some sort of sinister agenda.

T.

[skauwt]

I'm sorry that happened to you, but in my experience as a genealogical librarian, the majority of folks in the hobby are just ordinary people searching for their roots, and do not have some sort of sinister agenda.

T.

thankfully everyone else Ive been in contact with have great ,it was just one of life's lessons
my relatives where not soo keen on the names being copied without consent of them either something even i never thought of when doing a family tree

i guess cdnsushi and my selfs experience with genealogy sites is a lesson for folk out there to be wary ....by all means find out everything they can with regards to there family tree but not all sites out there are non-problematic

[macwilkin]

thankfully everyone else Ive been in contact with have great ,it was just one of life's lessons
my relatives where not soo keen on the names being copied without consent of them either something even i never thought of when doing a family tree

i guess cdnsushi and my selfs experience with genealogy sites is a lesson for folk out there to be wary ....by all means find out everything they can with regards to there family tree but not all sites out there are non-problematic

Agreed.

T.

[NewEnglander]

I just logged on to Ancestry and was able to add my sister's (female) fiancee to the family tree with no problem. True, the default gender when I added a spouse for my sister was set to male, but I was able to change that with no problem.

[CDNSushi]

Hmm... Do you suppose they've changed their minds or their policies about the same-sex thing?

Todd: Insofar as an unwritten code among genealogists goes, I'm afraid I don't know much about that and I do thank you for your viewpoint. However it seems that many genealogical resources are not offered on an "I'll share with you if you share with me" basis, which would be the presumption, if one were to follow some unwritten code of honour. Ancestry.com (and others) do charge good money for services and membership privileges, which means by extension, my information included.

If it were a "each according to their ability / each according to their need" system then I think I might be more inclined to agree with you, but in this case, I see it as being a little different. This is more along the lines of: if I pay Ancestry.com and YOU pay Ancestry.com, we can both see each others' family trees. Such a system, to me, implies that any party should be able to withdraw from the agreement, as with that, revoke viewing rights to any information they supplied.

If anything, in an effort to be fair and not "deprive" others because of someone's beef with Ancestry, I would say - keep ONLY the names in the database, with ANY other information inaccessible, but contact info. for the person who supplied the info, advising would-be searchers to contact that person directly to learn what their terms are for sharing the information. Or, minimalistically, just the name of the person who input the data, meaning that you would have to get a hold of the purveyor of information directly to fill in any gaps in your own tree. Then anyone can hunt you down if they really want and find out more. E.g. Yes, we DO have a "Jim Beam" from Kentucky in the database. Some additional info about Jim Beam's family may be available by contacting "Jack Daniels" of Tennessee.

Anyway, that's just hypothetical conjecturing and neither here nor there. I have been contacted by amateur genealogists before based on my name, but they've always had the wrong guy... I think any research I do from here on in will have to be the old fashioned way, in the "old country." It seems that just about nobody from our family aside from my parents ever emigrated anywhere, and there is next to nothing for information about middle-of-nowhere Czech village folk on this side of the ocean.

[macwilkin]

Hmm... Do you suppose they've changed their minds or their policies about the same-sex thing?

Todd: Insofar as an unwritten code among genealogists goes, I'm afraid I don't know much about that and I do thank you for your viewpoint. However it seems that many genealogical resources are not offered on an "I'll share with you if you share with me" basis, which would be the presumption, if one were to follow some unwritten code of honour. Ancestry.com (and others) do charge good money for services and membership privileges, which means by extension, my information included.

If it were a "each according to their ability / each according to their need" system then I think I might be more inclined to agree with you, but in this case, I see it as being a little different. This is more along the lines of: if I pay Ancestry.com and YOU pay Ancestry.com, we can both see each others' family trees. Such a system, to me, implies that any party should be able to withdraw from the agreement, as with that, revoke viewing rights to any information they supplied.

If anything, in an effort to be fair and not "deprive" others because of someone's beef with Ancestry, I would say - keep ONLY the names in the database, with ANY other information inaccessible, but contact info. for the person who supplied the info, advising would-be searchers to contact that person directly to learn what their terms are for sharing the information. Or, minimalistically, just the name of the person who input the data, meaning that you would have to get a hold of the purveyor of information directly to fill in any gaps in your own tree. Then anyone can hunt you down if they really want and find out more. E.g. Yes, we DO have a "Jim Beam" from Kentucky in the database. Some additional info about Jim Beam's family may be available by contacting "Jack Daniels" of Tennessee.

Anyway, that's just hypothetical conjecturing and neither here nor there. I have been contacted by amateur genealogists before based on my name, but they've always had the wrong guy... I think any research I do from here on in will have to be the old fashioned way, in the "old country." It seems that just about nobody from our family aside from my parents ever emigrated anywhere, and there is next to nothing for information about middle-of-nowhere Czech village folk on this side of the ocean.

The one thing you may not be aware of is that many people are able to access Ancestry through their public libraries, which maintain subscriptions for their patrons to use free of charge. So many genealogists are not paying for access to Ancestry, at least not directly -- they pay for it through their city/county taxes that fund the local library system.

Again, it's no skin of my nose what you do, I'm just offering my personal observations as a former genealogical librarian.

T.