Genealogy Chat

This question comes up every week.

Apart from the GR rule concerning permission from living persons, there are no rules to stop anyone making use of the information from this, or indeed any other site, as it is in the public domain.

well that certainly opened a can of worms!! Why on earth would anyone want to copy something irrelevant to their , thanks everyone family, I must be very naive as I would never have imagined such a thing

Just looked on frequently asked questions re viewing other peoples trees, it just says you may copy, but ask permission to take living persons details. It doesnt say that living relatives can be blanked by going into your account details and ticking the privacy box.
It would help if they put both pieces of information together, naughty G.R.

I do open my tree after exchanging a little info. I think if they want to copy let them, it is pointless having a tree that doesn't relate to you or one full of errors so they get their comeuppance that way.

Second Margaret, I along with other never open my tree because of all the copying. This does not mean that I don't supply information I just send it in a different form.
A few weeks ago I had a match contact me & spent 2 hours copying out information for him. A week later I heard from his uncle & sent him a copy of the same information. Did I hear from them again? Need you ask but thank goodness I waited before sending them the rest of the paperwork which they can sing for!

Margaret, they might not want you to see their tree in case you copy it all.

I had one contact with whom I had about 10 hot matches, I allowed her to view my tree and she copied the whole lot onto hers - including the people that were not related to her in any way.

She had major errors, men married to men and people married to people who were born about 100 years before they were. I contacted her and asked her to sort it out and she pronised she would. Funny how she still appears in my hot matches every month.

Now I let very very few people look at my tree, I prefer to email the relevant information and I know a lot of other people on this site feel the same.

Sam x

This is why it is sensible to send several messages first and check that someone really does have a connection before opening a tree.

Sue

This is fair enough but I find it a bit upsetting when someone you have ten matches with does not want you to see their tree, why would that be? I just don't understand,or am I being thick.

Hi Pauline
People also dont realise if they have given access to a tree which has names of living family.

Then they decide to delete or change names to living the original info will still be on the other persons tree.

Im sure this will be the case if you stop access to trees but someone can correct me if Im wrong

beware if you give a permission to view your tree.. a person has copied a family from my tree just because one name is the same. I know that it is not connected. I have deleted all my allows now and will be very cautious in future