Genealogy Chat

One member of GR has stolen family members from both my late husband's side of the family and mine. All my family is recorded on his tree and I get messages from GR telling me all about the "hot matches" he shares with me.I have taken away permission to view my tree but the damage was already done. I have written to this member asking him how he can be related to both my side of the family and that of my late husband but he does not reply.

I have written more than once to GR to complain about this situation..

Has this happened to anyone else and is there anything I can do about it. I find it very spooky.

I would appreciate any advice.

This topic comes up about as regular as the moon goes around the earth.

The other member hasn't actually stolen anything - he or she has simply copied the details that you so generously let them have access too. This is a risk that you take by putting your tree on-line.

However, members must have permission to add the names of any living relations to their tree.

If a member has added the names of living members of your family to their tree then GR can ask them to remove them. Please send a full list of any living names and their years of birth that have been added without permission to the Genes Reunited support team..

It would also really help the support team if you could send in full details of the person who has added these names. When you see your own name or your family names in the search results, you can on the link to send the tree owner a message. On the next page you'll see their membership number. Please include this name and number in your email to GR.

GR will then contact the member who added them on your behalf.

This crops up almost every week ,!!!! if you dont wish to share dont open your tree,as by doing so you have given permission.if there are no living relatives named and all they have is what can be found in the public domain then its information they could have found themselves and added to their tree and there isnt anything you could do.

Dont open your tree,confirm the link first then just offer wriiten information on how much you wish to share

Dead persons names cant be stolen,they dont belong to anyone exclusively.as they can be found publicly.

In fact, even info about living persons is in the public domain. The difference is that GR have have a rule that living persons must give their permission for their details to be added to a tree.

Ann

I wrote a similar thread about 2 months ago about another person not responding to messages. In this particular case it was asking what the relationship was between my parents and a brother who are all deceased that showing up in the Surname Summary search..

I never received a reply which is very frustrating and I doubt if there is probably any direct link other than through some obscure series of marriages.

Having said all that, the one thing I do recognise is whatever the link is or not, other people do have the right to add deceased persons to their tree although I recognise it sometimes can be a bit insensitive. There are individuals who have an almost obsessive nature in trying to make their trees the biggest in the world, irrelevant of how meaningless their trees are.

Deceased persons names cannot be "stolen" as has already been mentioned, they ar publically availiable including their births marriages etc. Provided I knew your date of birth and that you were born in the UK, I could easily recreate your tree back to 1901 in less than 20 minutes, it really is simple as that.

One of the beneifits of being able to do this means I do not need the 1911-21-31 censi to continue research beyond 1901. There has been much debate on various aspects of the 1911 census and beyond to which I simply keep saying you do not need them. However there are many who blindly refuse to accept there is such readily availiable information.

Michael

Ann

They are probably not related to both sides of the family - as has been said - a lot of people are Name Collectors - I saw a tree recently with all my ancestors shown - but is suddenly stopped and appear to be just hanging there

After a few minutes - saw that a female second cousin - twice removed etc living hundred of miles away from our roots - married someone and he had backed tracked the woman over several generations and ended up with my 7th gt grandparents

By no stretch of the imagination was he in any way shape or form related to me

You can actually check - if you go on to his tree and click on his name - click on full tree - and hover your mouse over tree names as you scroll thru the tree - it highlight the relationship - so find your deceased husband and see what it says

Dont worry - these people just want names - however obscure the relationship

I must confess - my Aunt who died very young married a man - who also died very young - and my Mother was very close to their children - my cousins -- I decided to record their paternal ancestors - as a memorial - although of course my Mothers brother in law - was not related to me

After a few entries I discovered they had not originated in Kent - as I thought at first - but actually descended from Dorset - -from the same group of villages as my paternal and maternal grandparents- so I went back to the 1700 s with ours

Anyone seeing my tree would say - why did they bother with their Mothers sisters husband ?

I should add I have a relatively small tree - I am not a name collector

Irene

I really don't 'get' this. Why on earth would you go on a public site like this one if you don't want to share information? I always ask people if I can use their information but that is just me- others have copied from me without seeking permission and - hey, what does it matter in the long run? Just more people around who know where you come from is all. Most of the information here is pretty sketchy anyway.

Large tree doesn't mean someone is a name collector.

I have contacts with dozens of members on this site who have trees with over 10,000 names and all would be upset, to to put it mildly, if they were branded as name collectors.

I have been a member on here for several years and have only come across on person who was a name collector, with no interest whatsoever in the genealogy. He wanted me to send him a gedcom of my entire file so he could add it to his tree. Needles to say he got short thrift.

I understand what you mean by stolen.

I made a mistake, a few years ago, by sending a GEDCOM to a newly found relative. Instead of extracting a relevant part of his GEDCOM to send it someone else, the relative sent his whole GEDCOM to someone else. That someone else put all of its content onto a public site. The owner of that public site refused to remove names of living people. Eventually a few names were removed but not many.

My GEDCOM contained much personal information, not solely what is in the public domain.

I learned my lesson and am careful that I pass on only relevant information.

I have to say that I find it much more infuriating when wrong information gets copied espescially on Ancestry trees because, if there are more trees that contain those errors than not, then the errors begin to look authentic.

In some cases where the wrong people have been attached to my family, my public ancestry tree contains unconnected branches with the correct data (i.e. if I know John Smith (A) married Mary Jones but there are trees with John Smith (B) marrying her, I do some research on the John Smith (B) family and include it in my tree in the hope that the wrong trees will get corrected and new people will be able to see the correct match).

Also I have found it useful to follow up families of the siblings of my ancestors as I have often found an ancestor staying with an aunt at the time of a census. Also witnesses and informants on certificates can prove to be more closely related than you realise.

There really is no need to add living people on a family tree as the word suggests --*genealogy* is history of past lives. a pedigree of ancestors past lives,who we are decended from.

If you opened your tree to this person, you cannot accuse him of 'stealing'

You gave him access - freely, and must accept the consequences of having done so

I gave a chappie access to my tree ( I had access to his) then I found he wasn't related in any way so I took him off my contacts. But hay ho that was my mistake, I ask now before giving access who do they originate from.

I have every sympathy for you Ann, but as everyone else has stated - there isn't anything you can do now. I have been approached by several people 'growing' very large trees. That's entirely their concern, but I'm afraid they will not glean much info from me because I have a very small tree on here, with few details. However, I'm always willing to provide more info if the need arises. I must say that by and large, people have been extremely helpful and given help when they can.

Piers

I know how annoying this can be.
It happened to me about four years ago when the man in question had around 2,000 names in his tree........I just checked again and has just topped 92,000 names.
Now, that's what I do call a name collector but I take satisfaction in knowing that people like me do make mistakes in their research and they can later correct them...........but just think of how many mistakes the name collector has in his tree. Well, he'll never know, will he ?

Bl&&dy hell. -

92000 names - hope he never wants to print it - it will cause a worldwide shortage of paper

Irene

Edit - adding 90,000 - over a four year period that equates to almost 62 names a day - every day of the year

i have some one in my contacts but they now cant view my tree who day after day on my updates add 30 or 40 peole

they must sit from morn till night doing this they have been adding for at least 5 years it must be the biggest tree ever

they must enjoy it but i find it a bit sad if thats all they do all day
so i think we are all in this persons family tree so we are all related

so no worry every one is related lol


sally w

I think most people have come across this problem in some form. My problem is when fellow researchers dont even copy properly.

I had a contact who despite being given copies of certs, parish records etc, still couldnt record details correctly.

This annoyed me at first but now I take comfort in the fact that I have got the details correct and this former contact of mine has passed on duff info to many fellow researchers. It tickles me that they all probably think I'm nuts as I am the only one with different info. The amount of trees on Ancestry with this wrong info is amazing and I know exactly where it ha all come from lol x

I once created a completly ficticious character on my public tree on Ancestry. This was simply to see how many people copied the bogus details without checking. I even gave this ficticious person a cryptic name based on Olive Oil. Sure enough this person now lives on in other trees and will probably be copied many times as new copiers duplicate what old copiers have done before them.

I was hoping hope against hope that one day someone would contact me to say they could not find any record of this person. I suppose by now after so many duplications it's almost impossible to tell the original ficticious person originated from my tree.

I say ficticious but as this character is now in so many trees they must have existed. After all, everone else can't be wrong, can they?

Michael

My family must be boring, cos nobody has ever stolen my tree. I must have given access to at least, hmm, 300 people? and before I do so I ask how they are related. A few don't reply, but most say "Oh, Fred is the Uncle of my great grandmother" and I believe them. I might be daft, but it hasn't done me any harm.

I have about 4,000 in my tree currently. Just recently added another 500 cos I've started on my daughter's partner (who has some very exciting people in his tree, could run to a few more thousand!), I am not a name-collector, can't imagine why anyone would want to be, but I do record anything and everything I come across in case it's useful in the future.

I can't really see a problem with people snatching your names. I have no living rellies on any public tree, they are all long dead. All the info on them is in the public domain.