Genes reunited

[annie1]

Hi,

I had a strange thing happen yesterday when I got my new Hot Matches, it showed someone with 77 matches Funny thing was, they had people in their tree from my mothers, fathers and my husbands tree, it might be true enough, but I am a bit unsure. I went back on to double check and this person is not in my hot matches now I did a quick tree search and it looks like they have even more than the 77
Has this happened to anyone else, I have never had contact with this person before.

Ann

[davran]

There seem to be people on GR who 'collect' family trees, so maybe one of these has been in contact with you and passed the tree on to someone else. I had contact from a certain 'gentleman' once who I foolishly allowed to access my tree before I checked out his connection. When I queried his connection to my tree he didn't reply, but the damage was done and he had attached both my side and my husband's to his tree.

I have no problems with sharing with bona fide connections - that's what it's all about, isn't it? - but I was rather put out by the lack of courtesy. The only consolation is that there are errors on there that will be duplicated on anyone else's tree.

As I say, maybe you have been targeted in the past by one of these 'collectors'.

[Ann In the UK]

I started a thread on this subject re Ancestry trees a while back.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13326

As my post suggests, I subsequently blocked the guy from accessing my tree on Ancestry and made access to it private to prevent anyone else from doing the same thing. But I still receive regular automatic updates from his tree and 'he' adds something in the region of 50 to a hundred people (often many more) a week on average. I don't care how good a researcher you are, that just doesn't make sense. And I know he's not the only one doing it either.

I don't know what these name collectors hope to acheive by doing what they're doing, or why these companies seem oblivious to or just overlook it, but if I were into conspiracies I'd say it's look very much like someone was trying to undermine/ruin these sites deliberately, in what appears to me to be some kind of (reciporacal?) commercial sabotage.

Regards, Ann

[Evalyn]

There are a few name collectors that I have come in contact with. Unfortunately I think that it has made a lot of people wary about sharing information. I have shared information with some wonderful people and it has been great to pool our knowledge but it is very frustrating when someone keeps copying trees (with mistakes). Finding relatives can be tricky enough without being led down the garden path.

[SarahND]

Hello Evalyn,
Welcome to
Pooling our knowledge is what this site is about, so don't hesitate to post if you'd like another viewpoint on any of your current genealogical puzzles-- we enjoy a challenge!

All the best,
Sarah