Who are Myheritage dot com?

[msr]

I was just doing some work on my Ancestry tree and decided to hit the 'search the web' link on my grandfather's page when up popped MyHeritage with
'Historical records and family trees related to ..........
Records may include photos, original documents, family history, relatives, specific dates, locations and full names'

Now I know that I haven't uploaded anything so it must be a relative mustn't it?   

Tongue in cheek question of course, as it could well be the owner of the 93000+ tree  who raided my tree several years ago.  No connection at all to any of my ancestors, unless counting the milkman of 29th cousin 8x removed    

Anyway, my serious questions are: - Who are MyHeritage?   Does anyone have a subscription?  If I try the 7 free days am I really able to cancel without charge on my card?

I would like to check the records out to see if they contain any of my photos.

Susan

[Guy Etchells]

Myheritage.com is an Israeli family history company similar to Ancestry and FindmyPast. It was founded in 2003 and has been acquiring or taking over other family history companies to grow such as World Vital Records.
The last figure I have for it is it hosts over 5.18 billion records and adds around 5 million records a day.
Perhaps I should also mention that it has a partnership agreement with the Mormon church’s (LDS - familysearch.com) website
Cheers
Guy

[groom]

Hi Su

Also take into account that very important word:

"Records may include photos, original documents, family history, relatives, specific dates, locations and full names'"

They may infact contain nothing but a name.

[msr]

Thank you for the information Guy.

Hi Jan,  the page which comes up from the link activation has names and dates of quite a few of my direct relatives.   Example.

.................(born ........), 1788-1866
.................(born ........) was born in 1788, at birth place.
.......... married ............. at marriage place.
........... was born in 1781, ............................ England.
They had 9 children: ................., ............. and 7 other children.
........... passed away of cause of death in 1866, at age 78 at death place.

The ............ are where I've removed the names and actual dates.  Where you see 'birth place, marriage place' etc the details will be available once a member.

Susan

[msr]

If these have been uploaded to MH by the person I suspect there will probably be photos.

But then I may be wrong and it's possibly a completely new contact.  Now that would be fun.

[iluleah]

Hi Susan

My advise is don't waste your time, however if you do make sure you have protected your computer as you will be bombarded with pop ups, dozens of sales emails from them and anyone and everyone they sell your information to and the website is difficult to close and changes setting on your computer, apparently you agree to these changes when you sign in.

[msr]

Thanks for the advice iluleah.   

[ITBookworm]

I have been a subscriber to MyHeritage since 2009 (my master trees are on there) and I haven't had any problems with them sending too many emails or lots of pop-ups  I do admit my computer is fairly secure and I would know how to stop some of that if they tried but I don't remember having to do anything.

They used to have an option where you could sign up for free (genuinely free, no credit card required, for a change!) and create a small tree but if your tree got too big you needed to move to one of the pay plans. As far as I can tell that is still the case.

You should certainly be able to sign up and look at public trees without paying anything (same as Ancestry you have the option of setting your tree as private - access by invitation or by request only). If you want to search the historical data they have you would need to select one of the pay plans for that.

As it happens although my trees are on there I don't pay to use their data. When I first started they didn't have the data side so I also took out an Ancestry subscription to cover that. From what I have been able to tell if you have subscriptions to one or more of the other pay sites and also use sites like family search their data pretty much overlaps entirely (well for my families any way )

Good luck seeing if someone in your families has a myheritage tree with photos they are can share 

[Guy Etchells]

I have not been inundated with pop-ups and emails from them, if you do get emails from them it is probably because you have not opted out of such emails using the privacy settings.

They certainly do not share personal information with third party sites see their privacy policy viz-

“Will MyHeritage disclose any of my personal information to third parties?
None of the personal information provided by our users is distributed outside of your family site and the MyHeritage Website Group.

In no case is the personal information provided by our users sold, licensed or otherwise shared by us with advertisers, sponsors, partners or other third parties.”

http://www.myheritage.com/FP/Company/popup.php?p=privacy_policy

I would go as far as to say My Heritage.com is on of the more respectful data providers in this aspect.

Cheers
Guy