Author Topic: Fed Up With Genealogy Tree Thieves  (Read 25538 times)

Offline LizzieW

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Re: Fed Up With Genealogy Tree Thieves
« Reply #18 on: Wednesday 28 March 07 19:25 BST (UK) »
I contacted someone on GR because they had the name of one of my g.gran's daughters from her first marriage in their tree and at that point I wasn't sure whether I had the correct family, so gave her the details I had.  She replied and said that yes, the info I had was correct and she would open her tree for me.

She did open the tree and I put in the name of the person I was looking for and sure enough it was there, but no matter how many names I clicked on or routes I took through her family I couldn't see the connection.  I e-mailed her back and asked what the connection was between her family and the person I was researching.  She e-mailed back and said there was no connection, she had just decided to do some research on the name because they came from the same town as her!

I have just looked on GR and her tree is still open to me, and my relative is still listed, but there is still no connection.  Now that's weird.

When I contacted another person who also had this particular relative in her tree, she was very wary as she had obviously come up against this other person before who had hi-jacked her family for no reason.  When she realised that I did share relatives, my g.gran is her g.g.gran, she gave me her home e-mail address and we contact each other frequently with questions and answers.

When looking at trees that are open to me, there are a few with my name and details of my brothers, parents, aunts and uncles and I haven't opened my tree to many of the people who have opened their trees to me, so it must be that they are getting the information from someone else.  I don't know who it is, as I thought I had a good relationship with the few people who have family members in common with me. 

As I mentioned on another thread somewhere, there is a GR member who has 33 hot matches with me, including my mum's grandmother.  When I wrote and asked him where he fitted in he just said my mum's grandmother was a very distant relation and that he had now deleted her from his tree.  He obviously hasn't because it showed up again last week and the 33 hot matches are all still listed.

Somebody is giving these details out.  I'm not really bothered if they want to collect names, I only want to know which branch of the tree they fit in to.

Liz

Offline Paul Caswell

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Re: Fed Up With Genealogy Tree Thieves
« Reply #19 on: Wednesday 28 March 07 20:26 BST (UK) »
I think I have been guilty of at least one of these 'crimes'. Perhaps describing them might reduce your stress levels because in each case I believe they were honourable.

I have, once, added a whole family to my tree that was, at that time, completely unconnected.

I collected the data from census so it was all public domain.

I chose to do this to try to find the connection of this family to my tree. I had good reason to believe that they were connected because their surname appeared as middle names in FOUR generations of my tree.

I did have several contacts, one of them helped me connect them up to mine and they are all there now.

I have just tipped over the 2000 people in my tree. I have been doing this for less than a year. I know almost nothing about most of these people.

When I first started growing my tree I made a conscious decision to allow this to happen in the early stages. That stage is now almost over. I am now able to study them, explore them, make them my friends. I believe I made the right decision.

That's the end of my confession but I would like to touch on one other point people have raised here.

I hold four different copies of my tree, one on my pc at home and one on each of Ancestry, GR and Tribal Pages. I find this easy to manage and control although the Ancestry tree is the most difficult.

The only way I can achieve this is through using Gedcom files. Please do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Gedcom files are incredibly useful when you want your tree on public view.

Carefully used, Gedcom files can be great timesavers. If, for example, you hold a tree on GR, you can download it from there, upload it to Ancestry and it all looks about the same.

Happy hunting. :)

Paul
Caswell - Durham(Jarrow), Northumberland(Berwick), Dorset(Netherbury)
Drury - Middlesex(Kensington), Shropshire(Oswestry/Selattyn)
Turner - Dorset(Parkstone)
Speight - Essex(Braintree), Kent(Gravesend), Westmorland(Kendal)
Stockley - Dorset(Corfe Castle)
Amey - Suffolk(Haverhill)
Cousins - Norfolk(Ketteringham)
Sears - Bedfordshire(Potton), Cambridgeshire(Gamlingay)
Census information is Crown Copyright

Offline downside

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Re: Fed Up With Genealogy Tree Thieves
« Reply #20 on: Thursday 29 March 07 12:17 BST (UK) »
Inchworm

If you freely provided access to your family tree on GR to person A and that person provided access to person B then you are can invoke the terms and conditions on GR which specify that a person must get a tree-owners permission before they copy information.  The problem is though, person A may have given person B permission to copy, so person B has not broken any rule as far as they are concerned.

It is too late to pull your tree off of the site as the information is now in the public domain.  Whether anyone has stolen any data is debatable.  It seems to have been given freely to the parties concerned.

downside
Sussex: Floate, West
Kent: Tuffee
Cheshire: Gradwell
Lancashire: Gradwell

UK Census information is Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk

Offline Inchworm

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Re: Fed Up With Genealogy Tree Thieves
« Reply #21 on: Thursday 29 March 07 14:28 BST (UK) »
The trouble is that I am too honest. If I let somone to look at my tree (and that is very rarely) I don't expect them to pass it onto another person without consulting me first. The same way that I would not pass on another persons email address without asking the person whose address it was in the first place. Where are paoples manners, I wonder.  ::)
Census information is Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk

DUNNILL - Yorkshire & Worlwide  
PETTY - Shaftesbury, Dorset
WOOLRIDGE - Shaftesbury, Dorset
NEWSOM - London, Surrey, Sussex
FROST - Staffs,Notts, Derbys,Leics,London,Somerset
ROSSITER - Somerset
ROWE - London, Hertfordshire
COLVER - Leicestershire
DICKIE - Buteshire, Ayreshire, Renfrewshire
KIRKLEY - North Yorkshire


Offline doorwoman

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Re: Fed Up With Genealogy Tree Thieves
« Reply #22 on: Thursday 29 March 07 21:42 BST (UK) »
Hi all.

My hubby had the same thing happen through genes yesterday. Someone had asked permission to view our tree, so when he clicked on the link to view their tree, our tree came up person for person. After 5 minutes ranting & raving, he realised that although he had clicked to view their tree, genes had diverted it to ours! It must have been something to do with the new version 5 upgrade.
Do check again in case this was the problem!
Sussex; Dadswell, Mew
Cambridgeshire/Huntingdonshire; Childerley, Desborough, Clarke
Surrey; Sayers
Nothamptonshire; Jenks
London; Rowse,Priestley
Hampshire; Cousens
R.O.I; Carroll
Sutherland; McGregor, Forbes, Campbell, Murray
Suffolk; Dawes

Offline LizzieW

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Re: Fed Up With Genealogy Tree Thieves
« Reply #23 on: Thursday 29 March 07 22:36 BST (UK) »

As I mentioned on another thread somewhere, there is a GR member who has 33 hot matches with me, including my mum's grandmother.  When I wrote and asked him where he fitted in he just said my mum's grandmother was a very distant relation and that he had now deleted her from his tree.  He obviously hasn't because it showed up again last week and the 33 hot matches are all still listed.


The above quote is from my own posting, but it is relevant.  I e-mailed 4 members of GR with whom I share ancestors asking about the person who has 33 hot matches with me, each one said he had contacted them too.  One said he had over 100 hot matches with him and that this character wasn't related to most of them, but had just hi-jacked them and added them to his own tree.  Another person said he also found this person had hi-jacked his whole tree, even though most branches were not relevant to him.  He is going to write to him asking him to remove all his relatives.  I told him if he still doesn't remove them he can be reported to GR.

Liz

Offline Britgirl

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Re: Fed Up With Genealogy Tree Thieves
« Reply #24 on: Monday 02 April 07 20:20 BST (UK) »
Inchworm,

I was going to post the same as Doorwoman.

Since Genes has updated it's tree there seems to be a glitch that actually takes you to the ancestor you are looking for,  but in your own tree, not theirs!!!  ::)

You can check, as it'll say "your tree" in the drop down menu on the top right side. So then you just click the name of the person who's tree you thought you were going to!
Grose - Cornwall
Rice - Devon
Harris - Herefordshire
Bristow - London
Sadler - Yorkshire
Nye - London
Allen - Cornwall
Palmer - Cornwall
Chynoweth - Cornwall
Cowling - Cornwall

Offline Inchworm

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Re: Fed Up With Genealogy Tree Thieves
« Reply #25 on: Monday 02 April 07 21:10 BST (UK) »
Yes, I have noticed this too.
The way around it is to open your own tree from the menu on the left side. Once you have your tree open, then use the drop down list of trees that you have access to in the top right hand side.

Inchworm  :)
Census information is Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk

DUNNILL - Yorkshire & Worlwide  
PETTY - Shaftesbury, Dorset
WOOLRIDGE - Shaftesbury, Dorset
NEWSOM - London, Surrey, Sussex
FROST - Staffs,Notts, Derbys,Leics,London,Somerset
ROSSITER - Somerset
ROWE - London, Hertfordshire
COLVER - Leicestershire
DICKIE - Buteshire, Ayreshire, Renfrewshire
KIRKLEY - North Yorkshire

Offline kate*k

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Re: Fed Up With Genealogy Tree Thieves
« Reply #26 on: Friday 06 April 07 12:04 BST (UK) »

 Another person said he also found this person had hi-jacked his whole tree, even though most branches were not relevant to him.  He is going to write to him asking him to remove all his relatives.  I told him if he still doesn't remove them he can be reported to GR.

Liz

Best of luck to him if he reports the theft of his to to the GR site administrators.  I tried this after my tree was hijacked and got no response at all. GR are simply not interested in what is done with information posted to their site, perhaps if they administered it more closely then hijacking wouldn't occur so often.  I stopped using that site completely after someone proudly e-mailed me "look what I have found for you family" and proceeded to read my own research back to me, which she had obtained from a third person.

Like many people posting to this thread, I don't mind sharing information.  I limit the amount of information out there by not putting on any sources - just a note that I hold sources for all of my entries and that anyone is free to contact me for that information.

I have had a couple of good laughs over the years.  One notable one was when a "cousin" carefully checked the details that I had given to him before entering it on his own site - then found my husband's name on the IGI and concluded that he must have been the John K..... that was baptised in 1797!.