Ancestry - information added to my family tree not by me

[Pheno]

This is what it says on Ancestry about searches in private trees:

'Private and searchable

When making a tree private, you may choose to allow people in your tree to be found in searches. Only the names, birth years, birthplaces, and any documents you upload) of deceased people in a private, searchable tree will appear in the search index. Photos will not appear, but limited information about the photo may appear (such as the name of the picture and the ancestor the image is tied to).

If the searching party then tries to view a photograph or other information about the person, they’ll receive a message saying that the image or other detail is in a private tree and that they need to contact that user to view it. The person searching can then contact you anonymously through the Ancestry messaging service, and you can decide whether or not to respond or give them access to your tree.'

This implies that other users should not be able to access photos in a private tree.

Pheno

[pharmaT]

I have had my tree set to both private and unsearchable for some time now.  My locations  have flipped a few times, I put it down to an Ancestry glitch.  The a week there I had a whole section of my tree with locations listed as "a town" rather than town name, strange.

The only times I have been upset by people having "my people" are the guy who has my dad fathering twins 5 years after he died and the other person who had me dead and insisted I could not provide enough proof to take my details off being shown publicly. Ancestry did though thankfully.

[Maiden Stone]

and the other person who had me dead and insisted I could not provide enough proof to take my details off being shown publicly. Ancestry did though thankfully.

Did that person think they had received a message from beyond the grave? 
This is like a modern variation of the old joke about an elderly person checking each morning that their obituary wasn't in the newspaper in case they had died without realising. Perhaps we should be searching for our own names on family trees online, then convince the instigator that " this report of my death was an exaggeration"  (Mark Twain).

[Caw1]

Very interesting - made me go and look at my tree which is private - I checked the settings - I wonder if you have yours ticked here as well.

I had to do this before one of my cousins would allow me some information.

Thanks Wiggy for pointing out how to stop searches showing up for private trees.... I've now gone to Privacy Settings and ticked it!
I've had one person who copied every new piece of information I added to his tree without asking even after I'd made my tree private.... very frustrating and so rude just to presume he could add stuff.... he's not even a close relative either.
Hopefully this should put a stop to him!
Caroline

[Finley 1]

Tinternet is WWW  tinternet is for everyone to SEE --- no amount of clicking PRIVATE makes it so..

Cos it isnt.. its WWW -- 

somebody in Aus or Timbuctoo can read this as of NOW and somebody in Aus can make it their own.

I HAVE NO RIGHTS to this comment or anything else I place on the WORLD WIDE WEB

just a passing thought this morning..

xin

[Mart 'n' Al]

If somebody really has got  unauthorised access to somebody else's data on Ancestry, I am surprised that nobody from Ancestry has commented here. I would imagine that they do prowl about on many family history websites.  Having worked in IT all my career, I think this will have a logical and reasonable explanation.  Again, based on my experience, computers do go wrong. Software gets wrongly deployed.  People forget to remove test data. People accidentally work on a live database rather than a test database. I'll admit to having made all of these mistakes myself as part of my learning.

Martin