General Chat

In their case, theyre number collectors. I asked someone to remove my kids names, but they havent. They are distant relations to my husband (and I stress distant), so I gave them tree access. They copied the lot, and now have over 15,000 on their tree, LOLOL. Thing is, if they're related to my hubby, why do they have MY stepdads uncle's wife on their tree?!

Hi all Just had a look at my hot matches and again just a quick moan. Have ask to have some one remove name s taken from my tree (whole tree). All that has happened is the living people have been removed.but my notes still by the words living. So who do you consider your relatives? They are also saying they have info on these names( again taken from my notes).one in my tree is only connected to me. Would be interested to hear what you may think. Is it rellies or just number wanted!!

Afriad thats all you can do is ask them to remove any living persons name from their tree that is your living relative,,,,,,,,,if you gave permission to see your tree then nothing you can reall y do much about the rest,,,,,as most can find *most *info any without even contacting the tree owner,,,,

isn't it becoming a common story? sometimes these people can be an asset, they do all the scrounging, all we have to do then is verify the bits that interest us ( for our own tree) doesn't quite have the same appeal though does it, I have been quite erkked(to put it mildly and want of a better word) when this has happened. esp when their family is all private and yours is out there for all sundry to see. Rule of thumb, before opening your tree, check to see how many the other person has on theirs, if its running into 000's then they've got to have too much time on their hands, or do it for a job!! good luck with your family, leaving my full name as I see some Deans amongst the names when I'm researching Yvette Dale, NSW australia

Ahhh! Thats a new theory!! so, some of these tree bandits could be professional Genealogists accumulating information for their own business purposes?? I must say that hadnt occured to me before!

morning Michael! yvette x

Morning Yvette - I am going bush for a few days - wont be back on here till Sunday night!@

I very much doubt if any PROFESSIONAL genealogist would publish a tree on the net for everyone to have a look at free! And a professional genealogist has to come up with bmd certs and a lot else besides, not some half-baked possible links. Mind you, a huge tree doesn't necessarily mean a sloppy tree. And a very small one doesn't mean the owner doesn't know much. They may be like me and prefer to keep it mostly off the internet. A very simple solution to this perennial problem - don't open your tree! I never do, and it hasn't held back my research one inch. OC

Some of these 'tree bandits' (like that term!) are simply building databases of connections. When GR started as GenesConnected there was briefly a spell when you could actually link your tree to a connecting one and see the whole thing. I think the initial idea was to form one huge internet tree. This idea hadn't been fully thought through and it wasn't long before we each had our own trees and any joining trees couldn't be done with a single click of a button. I cannot understand why anyone puts notes on living people on the Internet on a site like this. Presumably they are also kept either on paper or computer records so they don't need to be on GR at all. This problem crops up every few days and just wouldn't happen if tree owners kept only deceased ancestors on their tree and didn't put any sensitive information in notes. Once you open a tree then you are sharing. You may not like which relations then appear in someone else's tree but you no longer have any control over it. Someone doing a big interrelated interlinking database of families may collect loosely connected relations and that can be of great help to other researchers. I don't run one myself but know an excellent Lincolnshire collection which tries to connect people from an area. If you don't want certain people to be anywhere but on your tree then either never open your GR tree or make sure those relations stay off internet trees. Sue

However careful you are, there are always some people who aren't into finding their genuine ancestors. They will just take names. I used to get very annoyed and uptight about this,as you then have to correct other genuine rellies who have been misled. Time consuming but the ones who really bug me are those who won't accept that they not conected to you.. I acccept 'hands on reseach' by a distant rellie who didn't second guess..So because he cannot find the records won't guess. An Aussie contact is convinced that my female rellie is his ancestress and even though he has her correct dates he has given her the incorrect Parents!! he has got his info from two other GR members so I now have to find them and see if they have have been guessing! Bet I don't get a reply!! Dem