I was just wondering if anyone had seen Ancestry's post on fraudulent websites and Ancestry Insider's post on the article? I find it quite interesting that Ancestry is warning genealogists about fraudulent websites. I don't know how others might feel, but I feel this article was posted more to protect ancestry's image than it was to protect fellow genealogists. (Of course, that is not necessarily wrong, especially if another website is using their copyrighted images.) I guess I just have some mixed feelings about the news that they posted.
Of course, I have to agree with the two comments on Ancestry Insiders' post. Websites with genealogy links are almost always to Ancestry databases, and I think it makes it difficult for genealogists to differentiate between fraudulent and real sites since Ancestry owns most of the genealogy databases that are online.
Either way, I think it is sad that there are people out there who would use fraudulent means and steal images or formats to make money off of the interest in genealogy.
Posts
Indiana Genealogical Society blog
17 years ago
3 comments:
Jessica,
You've written a very thought-provoking article.
Ancestry.com is simply using "fear tactics" to keep researchers at THEIR site (as if it is the only non-fraudulent web site in town).
Janice
I ran the three sites past Blue Coat Systems web filtering raters (they have a free version at k9webprotection.com of that content filter) and indeed one of them, australian-ancestry.com, did come up as being an illegal or questionable website.
The other two were more subtle about it. Red flags are 'millions' vs. 'billions' of records, and the '$44 lifetime membership'
Some say these three sites involved, and the names were mentioned by Ancestry Insider and others, are phishing fronts, etc.
Hello James,
That is quite interesting. I guess every one of us (ie. genealogists) need to be much more careful of the websites we consider subscribing to or paying.
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