Genealogy Chat

I had someone contact me several years ago who asked if I would provide him with my whole tree, so that he could publish a complete tree of a particular surname.

I replied, asking for more information, and how was he related to me (other than having that name in my tree)


Never heard from him again!



I get very few Hot Matches, always have

and now most of them are just repetetive



and almost every one of them has exactly the same information that I have


....... because I gave it to them!!



Like others on here, I never open my tree. Anyway, most of my tree is not on this site.

I exchange emails with anyone who has sent an email asking if we are related. Once I have established that there is a link, then I send that person the relevant part of my tree. And I also direct them to other sites that I ahve found particularly useful in tracing my branch(es) back.



sylvia

Again I say from experience, so called hit and run merchants are few and far between, so don't be put off by one bad experience. Delete the contact and move on. The trick is to build up the relationship first, then you are less likely to get caught out.

There was a similar debate as this a couple of years ago, and I asked the question of someone who claimed to have had their tree 'stolen' by a name grabber as to exactly how many names on her tree we were talking about. Eventually she admitted it was around ten names.....!

Think I have only given access to 3 people. Two of them we share the same gt grandparents and the other one I have no idea because all the decendants from our connection have been hidden...lot of use that was

ja...x

Once a year I look through my contacts list and see who I gave access to to tree to. I read the email between us and if I think they only have a slight connection to me I stop them from viewing my tree but I do not remove from my contacts as I would lose all the msg's too. Who knows when I may wish to have another lokk.
Another thing is that if I remove them from my contacts I may end up contacting them again in the future, not remembering that I had already done so.

Hi
Yes I know what you mean I once sent a message to a man saying we shared the same person and his reply was so what there are loads of others with the same person. I thought what was the point in replying if he thinks like that.
Jean

Well, they're welcome to copy my tree because between me and my daughter I know there are quite a few mistakes on it and I haven't been able to get round to correcting it.

Sandra

Oh Jax don't you just wish you had their 'ability' in researching thoroughly all those names in such a short space of time ;-)

My best one yet was someone who copied my tree, added it to theirs and probably many others, and has now set themself as a 'professional' with their own website including their tree as an example of their research ability.

Shame the line for 'my' family goes haywire.

Easy to identify where they went wrong as the dates don't add up and the purchase of one cert would have sent them down the right line :-)

Oh well.

Chris

I had someone recently that copied my tree on ancestry and I could not see where we were related and she had 15000 people in her tree but my tree was public...so my own fault.

A few days later she comes on here and requests to view my Genes tree, I asked what connection we had....no reply

I have now looked at her tree and she now has over 20000...not bad 5000 new ancestors in a few weeks

jax

I too am careful about giving access and will do e-mails back and forth to establish how much we have in common first.

I had a request from someone once asking to see my tree but when I asked them why and who they thought they had a connection through etc I didn't hear back from them.

Play it safe first.

IGP,
I agree with you but I think Pigletspal is spot on, contact-info-disappear.

I have had contact with hundreds of people and this is the first time this has happened to me, I've heard about these people who take what they want and disappear. I just think it's so rude to keep ignoring messages, why not even reply saying we don't have a connection, at least that's something.

I think you have to look at the reason that people join GR. I joined initially to see if I could contact other people researching the same families, and that has been extremely sucessful and interesting. If the idea is to do your research online, GR may not be the best site. If you don't want to be bothered with the contacts, or to share info, why join in the first place when you have better records elsewhere?
It's unlikely that people join just to grow their tree via other people's research.

David, that's a really good idea and that's what I shall do from now on, thank you.


Pam, I'm a few days older and wiser now, Lol.

I have been a member since 2003, since then have made contact with several 100's of members and in that time could count on one hand those who I have felt ill at ease with.

Currently, I share my tree with around 400 members, and in turn, can view around 600 members trees.

I only share after the exchange of possibly several messages which allows me to build up a relationship with the other person. The other criteria is that they must have proved they have a relationship with my tree.

Others I have not shared with but have sent the relevant details by email, where I have felt it to be more appropriate or convenient to do so. Most people are not there to copy huge chunks of your tree - in my experience of, as I said, over 400 trees shared, they are only interested in their own little bit.

By all means take care who you deal with - but enjoy the hobby - not everyone out there is a rogue.

Like David, I make sure there is a connection and then only send the relevant information.

Hi Sandra

I don't open my tree for viewing any more after, in the early days, naïvely allowing people access only to find out later that they had copied people into their tree who had no connection to them at all. In this case it was my son-in-laws family and some people there just happened to share a similar name to some in my family (not related of course).

As I have 4 families recorded I do have a large number of names, but these have been researched and not taken from other peoples work unless we have been in contact with one another.

What I do is, after, 2 or 3 messages through GR, I exchange eMail addresses, and we do the exchange of the relevant information that way.

David

Pam, I've already done it (a couple of days after giving them access)

Thank you.

Go to MESSAGES at the top of the page and click on My Contacts. You can remove this persons access to your tree there.

PigletsPal, thank you so much and I won't make the same mistake again.

Jax, I have looked in there, this person seems to have looked at mine, probably got what info he/she wanted and didn't return the favour.

Have you looked in your emails as you will not get a message in your in box if someone gives permission

jax