Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 7 Jan 2016.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve written before about the difficulty in correcting record mistakes but I didn\u2019t expect the situation I\u2019m about to describe as hard to fix.\u00a0 Boy, was I wrong!<\/p>\n
Right before the holidays a co-worker\u2019s adult son went online and discovered that his grandmother was reported as dead on someone\u2019s Ancestry.com tree.\u00a0 He had the free trial membership, was inexperienced with how the program worked and emotionally impacted by the wrong info, especially at holiday time.\u00a0 He notified his mom what he discovered.\u00a0 She told him she had seen the same information a few months earlier when she, too, did a trial membership.\u00a0 The information was so off that if the woman had died in the 1950\u2019s when the tree said she had two of her children would have never been born.\u00a0 My co-worker asked me what to do to fix the information since it was upsetting to her children.<\/p>\n
I gave her Ancestry.com\u2019s contact number and suggested she call Customer Support and explain the impact the wrong information was having on her family.\u00a0 She did so and was informed that Ancestry.com policy does not allow for corrections to information placed by members on their trees.\u00a0 She could file an appeal but it would most likely be wasting her time as the company only approves the removal of \u201coffensive\u201d information.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know about you but I find it offensive that a loved one has been reported dead when it\u2019s not the case.\u00a0 I also find it offensive that personal information on living individuals is displayed when the company policy is supposedly to keep that information private.\u00a0 In this case, the co-worker\u2019s mother\u2019s name, date and place of birth, and marriage information is available because of the incorrectly added death date.\u00a0 I also find it offensive that the company knows that their member tree information is inaccurate yet provides no recourse to correct wrong information. \u00a0If you\u2019re allowing inexperienced individuals a free trial offer with little direction who then abandon what they input you\u2019re going to have wrong information available for a long time. \u00a0I also find it offensive that the problem will continue since the company does not provide simple to follow step by step directions for newbies to eliminate the possibility of errors.\u00a0 I also think it\u2019s offensive to charge a hefty membership fee when they know their site doesn\u2019t work correctly, is error filled and the number of records they tout as available includes wrong information. \u00a0Since we\u2019ve all gotten valuable information from each other I\u2019m not advocating\u00a0 making all trees private; I\u2019d be happy if they added a disclaimer banner when someone is searching on the member trees to remind people to be cautious.<\/p>\n
I told the co-worker yesterday I\u2019d see what I could do.\u00a0 Last night I looked and wasn\u2019t surprised to see that the error has now spread to a second tree.\u00a0 Of course it would, since people blindly click other\u2019s information believing it to be accurate.\u00a0 I emailed both tree owners explaining the error, its impact on the family and asking them nicely to remove the death date which would make the individual\u2019s other info private.\u00a0 One of the tree owners included in her biography that she\u2019s a beginner so I\u2019m hopeful she responds and I can educate her on how to avoid this problem in the future.\u00a0 She was on the site yesterday so that\u2019s a good sign for a quick resolution (if she figures out that she can get messages from other members!).\u00a0 The original source hasn\u2019t been on for over a month so I can see that as going through the appeal process which ancestry did not spell out to my co-worker. \u00a0Co-worker said she had previously emailed the individual but the wrong info remains. \u00a0I plan on calling Ancestry.com today to find out what the appeal process is and I\u2019ll keep you posted on an upcoming blog.<\/p>\n
Now that Ancestry owns Find-a-Grave I\u2019m wondering if there will be negative changes at the Find-a-Grave site as well.\u00a0 I\u2019ve always been pleased on how the administrator at Find-a-Grave handled correcting errors.\u00a0 All you needed to do was email the organization and let them know that you attempted resolution with the memorial owner.\u00a0 My second cousin was able to get his mother\u2019s information corrected within 2 weeks by showing that both he and I made attempts to resolve the problem before contacting administration.\u00a0 Why Ancestry.com can\u2019t follow that process is a mystery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 7 Jan 2016. I\u2019ve written before about the difficulty in correcting record mistakes but I didn\u2019t expect the situation I\u2019m about to describe as hard to fix.\u00a0 Boy, was I wrong! Right before the holidays a co-worker\u2019s adult son went online and discovered that his grandmother was reported as dead … Continue reading “Faulty Family Trees – Erasing a Deadly Mistake”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[32,33],"class_list":["post-248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-relationships","tag-ancestry-com","tag-correcting-records"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=248"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":249,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions\/249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}