Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Findmypast Says "Get Ready for Ancestor Sharing"

I received an email from Findmypast over the weekend, saying:

Get ready for ancestor sharing

We’re about to implement a pretty exciting change and thought you should know in advance.
From 1 July, the deceased ancestors on yours and everyone’s trees will become shareable as hints. With your permission, these hints will be shared to Findmypast members with common ancestry. But rest assured, neither they nor the general public will be able to see or edit anything on your tree.
Your privacy is of the utmost importance... Therefore, any information on you or your living relatives will remain private. Additionally, if you receive a hint from someone else’s tree, you can choose to accept or reject it at your own discretion. So you’ll remain completely in control.
This change is totally optional – if you don't want your dead ancestors to be shared, just follow the instructions in our FAQs before 1 July. We’ll send you a friendly reminder before that day, just in case.
In the meantime, feel free to have a look at our updated privacy policy.
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I uploaded my family tree to Findmypast several years ago, and have been using the Record Hints (from Findmypast records) to add to my family tree in my RootsMagic program.

This announcement means that now there will be Tree Hints for profiles of persons that are also in other Findmypast trees.  I won't be able to see the other trees other than the information (names, event dates, event places of parents, siblings, spouses, children) for the possible shared profile.

I'm hopeful that there will be several relatively close cousins who have submitted their tree to Findmypast and will have more information on persons in my Findmypast tree.

Note that this is different from the practice of Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com - they permit a search of their public family trees and provide Tree Hints from them on my family tree on their sites.

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Disclosure:  I have a complimentary subscription to Findmypast, and have accepted meals and services from Findmypast, as a Findmypast Ambassador.  This has not affected my objectivity relative to Findmypast and its products.
Copyright (c) 2019, Randall J. Seaver

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