According to the Ancestry website:
" If your tree is private :
Other users cannot view the contents of your tree. However, limited information about deceased individuals in your tree (name, birth year, birthplace, and any documents you upload) will appear in search results within Ancestry Community sites." And it says nothing about Ancestry, themselves, not having access to your tree.
" If your tree is unindexed (hidden):
Other users cannot view the contents of your tree and its contents will not appear in search results within the Ancestry Community." Once again, it is only hidden from users, not from Ancestry, itself.
Neither of the two above actions explicitly deter Ancestry from rifling through you research and training their own AI on your data,
Nonetheless, there is still the possibility that hackers will breach the Ancestry security and make off with some sensitive personal information to upload to the dark web, Everyone should be especially vigilant about what information about them or their living relatives they load onto the internet,
Hackers can breach anything that they decide they want to. Including RM. I doubt there isnât anything they can hack into. Years ago Norton Anti-Virus spouted how unhackable they were. Hackers proved them wrong, same with Google, Microsoft and all of them. Hackers get joy out of getting into anything out there.
As far as ancestry being able to rifle through your history; same goes for RM. Same thing goes for every single website with any form of genealogy information out there. Again, itâs a matter of choosing what you want in there.
Neither of the two above actions explicitly deter Ancestry from rifling through you research and training their own AI on your data,
This is called HINTING. There is a setting on Ancestry to control hinting if its a service you donât want. Otherwise the hints it finds are for you. Your tree is never given as a hint to others if private and unindexed.
Exactly, which is the precise argument for things to remain as they are and to not give users an option to screw something up then whine about it later.
As for not adding certain things to my tree to start with, that is just plain nonsense. It is my tree, I will add what I deem relevant to my research as I donât know where it may lead in the future. Previous discussions have already established that marking a fact private in RM does not always prevent it from getting through TreeShare. You may have already forgotten Reneeâs mention of the surprising number of FTM refugees who come to RM due to the auto-sync horking their trees and files. Why would RM even think about automating anything?
âŚand while I am thinking of it, I donât recall RM ever saying that their software offered âsyncâ at all. Because techincally it is not. It allows an interface to online services but never claimed to sync in all the years I have used it.
âŚand as for hackers etcâŚback int he day, I was in more than a few systems that I had not been given rights to. Of course I didnât harm or damage or steal data. Maybe I copied a few files here and there, but it was all harmless fun. I have, like your IT manager, taught programming. My teaching was on a community college level as I only have an MS in Comp Sci and as such the best I could have done at a 4 year school would have been adjunct as I donât hold a PhD. So yes, I do agree hackers can get their mitts in many places, however only the stupid do things to make it really easy. Kind of like people on VisageTome posting about what a great time they are having on vacation and leaving their profiles wide open so that any one that can read can figure out Joe Blow isnât home right now, and looky, he posted about the new 84 inch TV he just got for ChristmasâŚMerry Freaking Christmas to me! Hope he left some cash and jewely lying about alsoâŚ