Findmypast, the leader in British online genealogy, is catching up in the area of family trees.
Findmypast has 18 million registered users across its family of brands, which include:
- Findmypast
- Genes Reunited
- The British Newspaper Archive
- Twile
These users have already been building their own family tree on the site. Now with the newly announced privacy settings change, users will have the option to receive tree-to-tree hints.
Read on to learn more about what information is going to be shared, when the privacy settings change takes effect, your options to participate, and more.
Read the Announcement from Findmypast
“We at Findmypast have spent the past few months continuously developing and testing a collaborative family tree and I am pleased to announce that we are now ready to turn on the first of many new community features – tree to tree hinting.
From July 1, the deceased ancestors in everyone’s trees will automatically become shareable. This means that some users will start to receive hints about deceased ancestors stored in the trees of others. When a good match is found, the ‘existing tree’ information will be offered to the new user as a suggested ‘branch’ to add to their research.
While most of the major family history platforms and services already do this, this is a step in a new direction for us and we want to reassure users that their privacy is of the utmost importance. Information on living individuals will remain strictly private and hints will only be shared between members who have common ancestry – likely, a distant relative.
Equally, the recipients of these hints will not be able to edit or see the original tree they were sourced from, ensuring users retain full control of their research.
We also want to make it clear that this change is totally optional – if users don’t want their ancestors to be shared, they can change their settings back to private before July 1st. This will be fully communicated in a series of emails and on-site notifications. We’ll also send everyone a friendly reminder nearer the time and have updated our privacy policy accordingly.
So, all we are essentially doing is changing the default settings from “private” to “shareable” on our existing Trees and giving customers the option to switch back to private if they so choose.
We hope this new feature will enable users of all levels to make new connections and discoveries through collaborative research and look forward to sharing further updates with you in the near future.
If you have any questions in the meantime or want to know how to switch a tree back to private, please see our Tree Change FAQ page: https://www.findmypast.com/tree-change-faqs.’
Hear More About Findmypast’s Online Family Trees
In the following video you’ll get the answer to the question “Will or does Findmypast have a family tree?”
Tamsin Todd, CEO and Ben Bennett, Executive Vice President at Findmypast.com provide the answer to that and more. They also talk about the new Travel & Migration records, and the Suffragette Collection.
If you have ancestors from the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland don’t miss this interview by Sunny Morton, author of “Genealogy Giants – Comparing the 4 Major Genealogy Records Websites”. Learn more at here.
Get your copy of the Genealogy Giants quick reference guide at the Genealogy Gems Store.
About the Author: Lisa Louise Cooke
Lisa is the Producer and Host of the Genealogy Gems Podcast, an online genealogy audio show and app. She is the author of the books The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox, Mobile Genealogy, How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers, and the Google Earth for Genealogy video series, an international keynote speaker, and producer of the Family Tree Magazine Podcast.
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!
