General Chat

How would you like to discover that your entire family tree had been stolen and it is now shown on Genes Reunited and on Ancestry.com as the Family Tree of someone who you know has absolutely no connection with your family? Beware, it can happen if you reveal your family details to someone before asking a few pertinent questions. My tree was stolen on Genes Reunited. It is an extended view of my family and dates back to 1717. It took me 20 years of painstaking research to put together so it is especially galling when I see my ancestors on this rogue individual's family tree. He acknowledges that they are not his relatives but refuses to delete them from his tree. Genes Reunited are not interested in stopping this kind of activity so I ask you all to be aware that it does happen. It is wonderful to find someone who is a genuine family member but clearly you have to beware of imposters. My genuine family tree has now been removed from this site.

Sorry, am I being thick? Why in heaven's name would someone want an unrelated family on their tree??

How has he linked to your tree to allow him to add it?

Annina, there are some people who will put very distant rellies on, just to have a lot of names on their tree.

Like some people collect antiques, they collect names


Mo

Helen. Soz to hear that someone has done this to you.

Funnily enough, I have had someone contact me, saying they are part of my family, but they only had a few names on their tree, and I can't connect to them.
I am very wary of giving out too much info, as they are very vague about keeping in contact.

Let what has happened to Helen be a warning to us all.

I don't need to pinch other's tree's,mine all prolific breeders. Just today found a gt gt grandmother of OH who had a child at fifty.

Please feel free to take away some of my lot, I am getting to dread Hot Match day.

I'm not at all possesive about mine and just open it up to anybody who asks or even just wants to have a look.

I really dont understand why someone would want to gather info on people they are not related to, weird.! I'm new to Genes and have readily given permission to people who appear to have a connection to me to view my tree, am i wrong? I thought this site was all about sharing information and have so far found people to be fair in exchanging info. However should i be more cautious

i jus found someone whose got 31,000+ in there tree!!
yehh i really wanna look at that! wen they got big numbers they jus open tree for ya coz they avnt really got a clue who your talking about!!

Helen,
I sympathise with you. The same thing happened to me several years ago. Someone called Betts contacted me. In those days permission was automatically granted unless you remembered to cancel it before you sent your message. Two weeks ago I found part of my tree on Ancestry under the heading Royalty to Reality. At the time my tree was "stolen" several other people had similar experiences and rude messages from the culprit and he was removed from the site.
It is a stupid thing to do as how do you know the original tree is correct?
Someone else following the same tree as myself has followed a line and has totally incorrect information. I bought the bmd certificates to verify my research they obviously did not.
Rosemary

Helen,

You have already posted this on the Tips Board, where many of us have already contributed to the debate.

Why are you posting the same issue again on the General Board?

Every descendant from a main line have equal claim to your relatives, in my opinion anyway. and if you choose to put your information on a public forum and give access to it, it's likely to be used in someone else's tree:)

I don't see it as "stealing" as they are relatives to other people apart from yourself.