lhmatthews, your post contains several fallacies.

"Submitters apparently have the option to display or not display living person data "

Not true. The only way data on living individuals can appear online is if the user intentionally circumvented the filters created to block living data. No matter how stringent the rule, there will always be some idiot ready & willing to break it.

"Legally right or wrong, it makes us all more vulnerable to identity theft."

Prove it. Nobody else, in at least 10 years, has ever been able to prove a single case of identity theft directly caused by an online tree.

"I have a couple problems with this agreement."

If you have a problem with it, DON'T AGREE to it. Don't submit your gedcom. Or do you have an Ancestry dwarf living in your computer, ready to pop out and twist your arm?

"One is that you are turning the rights over to Ancestry.com to distribute your data.""

What is the point in submitting it, if you don't want Ancestry to distribute it via their servers to the internet? Or are you implying that Ancestry is "distributing" your data to spammers, criminals and porn sites?

"... no matter what the validity of the data"

Anyone who submits less-than-proven data to any online site deserves to get burned. That is just bad genealogy, any where, any time, any way. Period.

"They have sold CD's of family data before from those who have submitted data to Ancestry.com! "

That has never happened. Ancestry did purchase a company that sold CD's (genealogy.com's World Family Tree), but once again, every user who submitted to that program, VOLUNTARILY agreed to it during the submission process.


It's okay to hate Ancestry - really it is - but do you have to make up charges against them to build your case?