Genealogy Chat

On checking my contacts I found that access had been granted to my tree today, 20th September.

I had not contacted the member nor had I given her access to my tree.

Although I have taken the option to hide living relatives the unauthorised access to my tree is very irresponsible of GR.

This is not the first time this has happened - it happened earlier in the year too. I had to remove access to several unauthorised members on that occasion!

Kat

I have not contacted the name that is displayed either today or in the past.

The date is next to the sent message which gives permission of access.

I am aware of the box re access when sending messages. But as I did not send any messages last night or earlier today???????

I contacted GR in the early hours of this morning.

I think it is another glitch in the new GR format.

I have been given access to several people's trees when there has been no contact between us. I simply ignore the tree and send a message to the person telling them I have been given access so that they have the opportunity to withdraw the access.

Kath. x

Claire I agree with you on this. I think the box should be unticked and then if you want the person to have access to your tree then click it.

Just the other day as I was typing a message to post I noticed that after unclicking the box the arrow began to flicker on and off and back on literally as I wrote my message. This worried me as I did not want the person to see my tree at this time. I made sure that before sending the message I unclicked the box again. I then made doubly sure that person was not allowed access by immediately clicking on my contacts.

Has this happened to anyone where by as you write a message to post the tick flickers on and off?

Can someone tell me where I can find "My Contacts" please - I must be going blind but I haven't been able to find them since all the changes happened.

Thanks - Athena

Thanks, Happy - off to give it a go and see if I have any unauthorised access on my tree!

Athena

I have removed my tree from here because of my concerns over security - particularly after the incident when someone got into my account and changed my board name to something rude! GR said that was not possible but we all know it was and is

So, I have no one on my tree here now yet two or three times a week I receive messages saying someone has opened their tree to me. I havent asked and havent had contact with these people and yet I am able to wander freely through their info - including their own very personal stuff.

So -- after reading this thread, I decided to go prune the tree accesses in my contacts list -- by closing my tree to people I had previously opened it to, where it had been firmly established that there was no match. I kept the people in contacts, so that I would know I had had previous contact if I ever ran into the false match again.

And within the hour, I had polite messages from two puzzled people thanking me for the access, but saying we didn't appear to have a match.

I had clicked on the link to STOP access to my tree, and GR sent out messages GRANTING access to my tree.

I check now, and the trees show as open still. So ... do I try to stop access again, only to get another couple of dozen messages sent out granting access??

I thought I liked the changes to the appearance and functionality of the site. Not so much now.

Apparently! It doesn't seem to have happened in all cases, but there are three "grant access" messages in my file that I didn't send. One, I could see being my own human error ... I lost my mind and granted access instead of stopping it. Three is a bit much.

Sigh, I know that for some reason you seem quite insistent on blaming the victim for this problem, but no, your potential explanations just don't work here.

I sent no messages today. I therefore could not have failed to untick a grant-access box on any message sent. In any event, I don't believe that leaving the grant-access box ticked generates an entirely separate access-granted message from the sender. (I just tried it -- initiated a contact from a search results list, even though I hadn't initiated any contacts today anyway, and left the box ticked. Sure enough, no separate access-granted message from me was generated.)

As I said, one "grant" instead of "stop" could have been human error. I just don't see me doing it four times (did I say three before? it was four), when what I was specifically doing was going through my contacts list and looking for instances where access was allowed as a result of an outdated confirmed non-match, so that I could remove access.

So I'm trying to check back to my sent-messages box, and first I get an error message when I click on that link, and then I get sent to the home page ... third time lucky.

Just to be clear: it isn't just that access was suddenly and spontaneously granted. It's that there are four messages in my sent-messages file, sent by me to four different people, to whom I did NOT grant access today, and whom I specifically stopped from having access.

Here's an interesting thing. The four tree-shared messages that were sent out were all to people with given names starting with "S" -- three Susans and a Shirley.

My contacts list is arranged by date created / ascending, not alphabetically / by given name. So I didn't just blank out and tick off the wrong thing for four names in a row; they were in different places on 9 pages of contacts. Besides, I was doing them individually, not by ticking the box and clicking delete.

So no, it really doesn't seem to be me. I'm not a child, and I'm not inexperienced at doing things on the internet. Quite the very opposite in both cases; I'm pretty old, and I'm very expert at using the internet for both work and play. And I have absolutely no difficulty in distinguishing a green tree from a red 'X', and knowing what both mean, if only by reading the accompanying text. And I'm plainly not the only non-child non-moron this is happening to.

It's possible that I made the same stupid mistake four times, and that others with this problem did something equally stupid. I'm just doubting it.

Hi Kathy

When you starting doing your family tree you were very happy to get information from other people who had done all the work previously for your family, but you do not seem very keen to let others share your information. Perhaps the best thing would be to go of GR and keep a private tree and use the internet the same as other people have to and work hard to get their familys sorted

Victoria, you obviously haven't been on GR long enough to know the problems this can cause.

It is our choice for people to view our trees. Many like myself put our trees on GR so we can get contacts & then communicate further through email. Not for every Tom, Dick & Harry who may also have a Smith, but not necessarily connected, in their tree take my information & broadcast it on many different websites of which we have no control!

I have found my nephew & niece's personal information on other websites due to a rather uncaring genealogist! Thankfully I didn't give him the information.

How do you know Kathryn got all her initial information from other people?

Ozi.

Excuse me, Ms. Victoria. Was I speaking to you? Or did you just get out of bed on the wrong side today?

I discovered yesterday that someone I had contacted TWICE WITH NO RESPONSE had ME in his tree, because when I contacted him I spontaneously opened my tree to him and then forgot about it.

He scooped my information from my tree and made NO effort to contact me to explain what our connection was -- and DID NOT open his tree to me. The third time I contacted him was when I saw that he now had my grandmother's mother in his tree, where previously he had had my grandmother's father's ancestors -- so obviously there was something up.

In response to my third contact, he gave me an offhand reply that he didn't really know how my grandmother's mother was related to his wife, but I could look at his tree. Well, it turns out that his wife and I share grx3 grandparents.

I and my mother and my grandmother are now in the tree of someone who didn't have the common courtesy to answer my messages, let alone let me see his tree, for 18 months after I first let him see my tree, and not until I asked about our connection for the third time.

So you think I should continue to allow someone like that access to my tree? Not on your nelly.

I also don't see any need to keep my tree open to anyone else I have contacted who has never responded. I used to open my tree automatically when I initiated a contact, as a sort of gesture of good faith and interest. No longer. Return contact first, tree second.

Nor do I see any need to keep my tree open to anyone with whom I have communicated when we have definitely established that our families have no connection.

I devote hours and hours and weeks of my time to helping completely unrelated people sort out their genealogical puzzles and brick walls. I'm extraordinariliy good at it, and I am more than happy to help. I don't need lecturing about anything from any upstart pipsqueak at GR.

You really need to mind your own manners. Do please note that if I wished to be addressed as "Kathy", I would say so.

Thank you, Ozbird. I won't keep on going on. ;)

Well, Peter, since I gather you're a user of GR like the rest of us, I can only suggest that if you don't know the explanation for this problem, you give up on trying to tell the others of us that it doesn't exist / it's all in our heads / it's our own damned fault. If GR needs shills to insult its customers, well, I guess they've found one.

Yes, it doesn't add up. Duh.

My only advice would be that when you reply to people's posts you not make up stuff and put it in their mouths:

"First you describe the situation which happens when you give access to your tree but in the next breath claim that you have denied access."

No, I don't, and didn't. I don't know what that sentence is supposed to refer to, but it does not appear to be anything I said. Perhaps you could read what I said again, to sort it out in your own head. No need to keep attempting to persuade me I'm an idiot though, I assure you.

Here's a fun thing. I am now finding it impossible to add messages to this thread, and keep getting some irrelevant message about how trying-to-find messages will be removed from the board in question. Maybe it's been locked. Maybe the problem it's about will be addressed. Who knows?

No Kathryn, I'm getting the trying-to-find message for other threads too.

As I said on another thread I think there's something going on, possibly updating, as I get error messages as well when trying to submit replies.

Ozi.

I apologise to you, I thought you were someone else who keeeps complaining about people getting info from their tree. They were happy to take all my info but refused to give any back and they are a close family relative.

SORRY AGAIN FOR UPSETTING YOUJ.

I'd like for this to stop, if it's okay with you.
(I'm editing because apparently my html tags didn't work, although they did in Preview.)


"GR do not suddenly open other peoples tree out of the blue, it is those members who are doing it."

This has nothing to do with anything I said. I was not a party to any previous discussion, and I have not commented on it or attempted to connect my problem with it.


"A contact doesn't have to be made by way of a name in your tree either for either of you to allow tree access."

This has nothing to do with anything I said. I specifically said that the people in question in my problem ARE contacts, and are in my contacts list. In fact, I have no clue what you are getting at here at all.


"Also removing a contact doesn't do the same in the other persons contact list, although I believe it will remove your tree permission."

This has nothing to do with anything I said. I specifically said that I KEPT the people in question in my contacts list, so I would recognize them if the false match in question arose in future.


"This is why they can continue to play with the tree buttons and you may receive a message out of the blue saying they have given you permission to see their tree, when you have long since forgotten about them."

This has nothing to do with anything I said. I did not receive a grant-access message, grant-access messages were sent by me without me sending them. I was not "playing with the buttons" in my list, I was intentionally stopping access to my tree for a number of individuals, almost all for housekeeping reasons.


"Also a good tip, if you previously allowed someone to see your tree, and wish to remove that permission, don't just delete the contact, remove the permission first, then delete."

This has nothing to do with anything I said -- fond as you do appear to be of passing this tip along, this being the severalth time here. I specifically said that I was NOT deleting the contacts, I was stopping access to my tree.


"You can also find My Contacts by clicking on the Message tab at the top of the page, then selecting My Contacts from the list on the left."

For pity's sake -- what do you imagine I had done??? And why would you imagine that I need this little tip? In fact I couldn't figure out how to find My Contacts since the reorg, although I hadn't tried too hard, and it was fortunate I happened on this thread that explained it. Yes, duh, I can click on the link in the lower left for messages/contacts, or on the messages button at the top ...


"Checking "My Contacts" is the only sure-fire way you can see whose tree you can see and who can see yours, and you can change you mind at any time by one click of a button."

Okay, now I'm just convinced I'm talking to a bot.

What did you imagine I was describing, and have been talking about nothing but, all this time?



While I'm here, let me just say that I recommend GR as great value for money and a very useful resource to everyone I run into. The odd glitch doesn't affect that, this was just a particularly annoying one, for me and the people I "sent" those messages to.

Oh look ... while trying to check something else as I composed this message, I got:

HappyGenesReunited error '800a9c68'
Application-defined or object-defined error
/boards.asp, line 14

...

Thank you, Victoria. As you can see from my explanation, I'm the one who has been the "victim" of just the conduct you describe (fortunately only on the part of a quite distant relative, and only by marriage, in my case) not vice versa. ;)

Let me share a little tale. I spend quite a bit of time at a county-specific board, helping out with people's problems. I got a crucial bit of info there from someone with access to records I can't get on line from outside the UK, and I figure: genealogy karma. Some day, someone will crack my particularly weird nut for me, if I just keep tracking down their ancestors for them.

Someone was looking for the name of the man her great-aunt married, who was promptly killed at the front in WWI. She wanted to know whether he had family who might like a copy of the wedding photo she had. I thumbed, virtually, through the untranscribed GRO index pages for the period, and found him. Then I came here and found four people with him in their tree, and contacted them to ask that they get in touch with her if they'd like.

Well, they're all getting on in years, and there were a confusing few PMs (opening my tree to them was not going to help!). Eventually, one of them explained that she was the granddaughter of the man in question. This sounded like that old joke, where a man and his son are in an accident, the man dies, when the son arrives at hospital the doc says "I can't operate on that boy, he's my son". (The doc is a woman, of course.) Turns out the great-aunt's husband had a son from a previous relationship.

So we were chatting, and she asked me where in Canada I was, because she has a cousin ... nowhere near where I am. But I told her that my mum and I had visited her town in Nottinghamshire on a trip in 1994, and found the pub that my grandmother's uncle once owned. And she wrote back:

Hello
I cant believe what you have just said about C__ family
My friend A__ C__ P__ I think has been in touch with you she has told me about you and about Calverton

This woman is a good friend of the granddaughter of the man who ran the pub. The granddaughter and I 'met' when she contacted me a few months ago through a correction I'd made at Ancestry.

Now if that isn't a small world. No help with my own weird nuts, of course, but a reason to keep believing in genealogy karma nonetheless!