Genealogy Chat

I had a contact last week asking to view my tree. I was going away on holiday and allowed them access.
Imagine my upset when i returned to find she had put all my relatives into her tree. including my children. Am I wrong to feel this way, of all the trees i have been allowed access to i have never once wanted to put in anyone who just might be a part of my tree however far removed. she had over five and half thousand names in hers, i only have over 400 but every one of those names means something to me. i feel i know them all as I have only ever put my direct line on here. I could have 1000's myself but they would be so far removed they would mean nothing to me. this person who took my info now is my no1 hot match with 107 of my names. am I being selfish? I've never minded showing anyone my tree and if i have i have asked that they respect my living names. Also on my account page i ticked the option to hide living relations so how did this person get to view them?

I'm afraid thats the way it goes. If you give someone access to your tree then they may decide to add some of your names to their tree, that is a risk you take.

Even if you hide living names, they are still on the database and visible via searches. Anyone with a bit of experience can easily work out who is who reasonably easily once the can see your tree structure.

It doesn't really bother me - but then I don't give access unless I have a huge amount of matching information and the requester also allows me access to their tree first, just so that I can check that they are not just name collecting

I was in the same position when someone had access to my husband's family tree (which of course linked up with mine). I too was horrified when he not only took my husband's family but mine too - right back to 1724 and which had no connection whatsoever to him. I was angry like you and he had actually given his telephone number to my husband so I rang him up and asked him to remove all of my family which he did. However my daughters and grandchildren he left on so I contacted GR and they had them removed. Hope that works for you.

Jo

i see what you are saying Peter but I what I cant figure out is why someone would just want to add names for the sake of it. surely they cant mean anything to that person it just becomes numbers. I have strong feelings towards the names in my tree.

Thanks Jo, I will email her and see what I can do. I am so miffed.

I have a quite a few people on my tree that are only connected by a series of marriages, but I like the idea that further back they may be connected in other ways. I like looking into the history of names, of places etc, and also, it gives me something to work on if another line dries up for a while.

Laura

I have had the same experience, when just after I put my tree on to genes a distant cousin asked to view my tree he then added all of my relatives on to his he is obviously a name collector, I only put on my direct line on and may be the odd spouse of a great great aunt only to see if I will get any information maybe that will solve a mystery or that they might have some photos but apart from that, I am more interested in where my ancestors came from and wonder how they lived there lives and what they did for a living.

janet

thats good to hear Janet, I feel i know all mine personally, maybe I'll add more as and when I get to "know" them. all sorted anyway I emailed her and names have gone. thank goodness!
x

The absolute best way to avoid any problems is to send the person a GEDCOM file for the branch in question. That way you can control what info is made available. If anyone desperately wants to take the research further then it is relatively easy to do in the normal course of family hitory research.

There is a difference between viewing a tree and copying all the information. As soon as people realise this then this type of thread will re-appear on a regular basis.

Glen

I learnt the hard way as well.I do not open my tree at all.I had a man e-mail me last night about his great grandad, my ggg grandadHe was not sure where he was born.He had opened up his tree.Only one name.HIS.Today he has 685 names so he has copied someones.He also only joined yesterday. Annie

Might find him on the success board

Grannie, theres also the possibility that he joined yesterday and has now downloaded his gedcom to the site.

i also let a rellie have access to my tree, he is a relation on my father side.he put all my mothers family in his tree.
and then had the cheek when someone e-mailed him about her family he told him to e-mail me.
he also gave someone else access to his tree and they have also copied all my family into their tree..some people are thought-less

theresa

Theresa- if someone contacted me about one of those people in my tree who I know is closer related to somebody else on GR than me, I'd suggest they contact them as well.

I would point out though, that I only open my tree (or request someone to open theirs) once we have already established a link.

There are a couple of people on this site with, say 40,000 names and when you look for your particular 'Coad' family (for example) there are about 20 different ones that don't even link up!

I'm not that sort of person, though I do like having branches off in different directions etc as I explained before.

Living people either shouldn't be on there or hidden. if someone asked me to take any off (if I have any there, not sure I do) I would do so straight away. However, what you need to realise is that once you get back to a certain date, that info is all there on the net for them anyway!

The main problem I had is when I started getting back into this hobby last September, I had everything on FTM which I was playing around with, had all the details on there for interest etc and then just uploaded that gedcom without thinking about having smaller, separate ones etc to put onto GR. Something I shall probably look into soon to avoid pages of hot matches!

Laura

A few weeks ago I contacted a GR member about an ancestor born 1812. Had a very friendly reply had access to his tree and gave access to mine. I then discovered he had put all my family members including living people on his tree.At first I was very angry but then cross checked with two other people I had contacted re same ancestor and found he had done the same with them. He has thousands of people in his tree as some of you said just name collecting.
Susan

All of my tree is on my Legacy programme on the computer and only direct ancestors and those I am hoping to find out more about and have hit a brick wall with on here hoping to overcome it. I also do some at work and its the only way I can access my tree for things I am researching.

I have had someone copy names for my tree but I was lucky in the sense that it was only the people relating to them and not the whole tree. I have also had people asking to look at my tree without any further information.

If I make contact with someone now I also verify the information on their tree to make sure it does in fact link in with mine.

Unfortunately some people do seem to like to collect names, I also like to build up an image of that person and what it would have been like living when they did.

Peter, what do you mean by hidden relatives are still visible via searches? Are you saying that people can still see the names of my husband and children even though I have hidden them?

What's the solution to this?

Margaret

Margaret, I believe they are visible on searches but can't be sure. You could get a friend to try, or send me a pm with one of your (less sensitive!) living names and dob and I will check for you.

Margaret if I put a the name of one of your hidden relations in the 2 boxes at the the top of the screen, their names would appear along with their Dob & Pob.
If I had access to your tree they would be hidden but if I did a name search on your tree it would take me to their "box" but their details would be hidden.
Safest way around this is just don't put them in!

Im also going to have a little moan... Now I will admit that I do take info from other people's trees BUT
-only if i know there to be a connection,

-If I believe that it is valid to my research in any way,

and most importantly
-ONLY if I have their permission.

and even then, I only put name, year of birth, and county of birth. yet i looked at a tree of one of my (very distant) contacts yesterday and found that all of the personal notes I had written about my grandparents, their mannerisms and things that I remember about them, had been copied directly into this person's tree. And this person doesnt even have a connection to me on their side of my family.
I have to say that I felt a bit violated, and upset. maybe it was my own stupid fault for putting that sort of thing on here, but I just thought that people would realise that sort of information was obviously deeply personal. I thought it might be nice for them to read a bit about my grandparents as people if they shared a connection with me through them, didnt think they would simply copy the whole lot down. silly me, I will be more careful about what i write now.
Laura xx