Ancestry.com

Ancestry used to be a great resource and they are ruining it imo with all the extraneous stuff. Just advertisements and bait to get you to do things. I almost resubscribed but I was reminded why I quit when i went back to check something. Stories about people who have nothing to do with me or my family and generic photos attached to my facts to try to suck me into participating in creating generic type stories.

I don’t really know what I was expecting but I definitely didn’t think it would come back negative.

UPDATE: thank you for everyone’s responses this has been a big weekend for my family

I messaged my uncle and gave him my dad’s info. My dad and his brother are now connected. My uncle is in shock about this. Thank you again so much!

My grandma had a baby boy at 17 and that baby boy was given up for adoption in 1972.

I got my DNA results back and noticed this older man who looked just like my dad was a top dna match to me. I sent it to my dad to see if it was a cousin of his and I got the family secret story about my grandmas son.

So before this I messaged him because I never saw his last name in my family tree, he just messaged back and said he was adopted. So this is likely my grandmas son, my uncle.

Anyway idk what to, I’m not supposed to know about him , my grandma never looked for him and I’m stuck leaving him on read because idk what to say. My grandmas birthday is tomorrow btw. Please help. This is crazy.

Second update: I've had several good conversations with reasonable people, but others need to relax a bit. I'm not personally attacking you or dismantling my family legacy just because I marked my tree private. I'm actually a nice person in real life.

Update: It seems this post has gotten a lot of attention. After getting a good night of sleep, I agree with the people who say that my initial reason for making my tree private was petty, and I was taking the situation personally. However, I am keeping my tree private because I've recently started adding hypothetical lines (an upside to having a private tree). Anyone who wants to see it can message me and I'll gladly share my information. I have dozens of hypothetical relationships in my tree right now, and I don't want to make it public until I'm fairly sure of my work. This conversation has also brought up a lot of interesting points about ethical research and intellectual property. My eventual goal is to make my research freely available to the public as either a PDF book or on a website. In my tree, I hope to identify potential research areas so that other genealogists can make future discoveries.

Original post: Our FamilySearch tree got absolutely mutilated by incorrect sources and bad information, so I decided to start a new tree on Ancestry.com. I do genealogy every day and I've broken down a lot of old brick walls through sheer hard work, such as skimming microfilm records. I messaged several other members on the website (with trees), hoping to reciprocally share information, and didn't get any reply... that's okay. Then I realized that two of the people had seen my message and had subsequently stripped all the new info from my tree to put into their tree (when I initially did the work, nobody else had that information and they would have had to go to German websites to find it). I messaged one again, asking if she would be willing to share whatever she had with me, and I still got no reply, although she saw my message.

I decided to make my tree private (for now), because I got pissed about these people taking my research after I reached out to start a conversation with them. They probably didn't even verify my work. I'm also worried about my hard work getting publicized and corrupted before I can fill out more of the family tree with good documentation. Is that petty? Should I make my tree public again?

I would love it if you could search hints by record category- either by clicking on the category in hints and seeing all the people to find, or by going to that record set and having the option to see all the hints for them there.

They can also revert the paid parts of DNA back to free, you've already paid for the test, those components should stay free.

And quit the social media aspects and focus on serious genealogy.

Hello! Someone recently emailed me via . I clicked on their link and discovered that this person and I share 50% DNA and 3,474 cMs. According to everything that I'm reading, this person is either my father or child (and I know it's not my child). Of course, I responded to the person and we were corresponding until I mentioned the fact that we shared an alarming amount of DNA. That was 3 days ago and the person has not responded. I guess I'm wondering if anyone has ever seen that much shared DNA and it not be a parent or child connection. I reached out to and they are confident that the person is my biological father (based on age) and that it is not a mistake. I presented the information to my mother and she swears that my father is my father and that is mistaken. I'm hoping someone can shed some light on this situation as I am very confused.

Update The mystery person finally responded to my ancestry.com message. He said, "Good morning. I truly apologize for reaching out to you. I will not bother you anymore. I'm signing off."

To me it seems like he knows more than he's telling me, which is nothing. He won't even tell me his name.

Update #2 My sister got her results back and we are FULL siblings but the mystery man also matches as her father. What does this mean? Was my dad separated from his identical twin at birth? I'm even more confused now!

*Updaye #3 - FINAL ANSWER! So, I finally convinced my father to do the ancestry.com kit and got the results back. HE IS MY BIOLOGICAL FATHER!! This other person is his identical twin! My father had absolutely no idea he had a twin and has NO DESIRE to find his long lost brother 🥺

Edit: added Scott DePace and Jason

Recently, I paid for Ancestry DNA - and was able to build a family tree in Ancestry. I've been with 23andMe for years, and have had a FamilySearch account for a couple of years now.

First off - what is the value prop for subscribing to Ancestry when so much of that is free elsewhere? Second - anyone else disturbed, and slightly angered by the fact they make you pay to see YOUR OWN FAMILY PICTURES, documents, etc?

I get that has far more people using it, and therefore I have more 'matches' there..along with trees - but I found the process to build a family tree in 23andMe much easier (although limited to a smaller number of ancestors)- and many of the documents/photos that Ancestry would like to charge me for I can find for free on FamilySearch. I just don't get it.

I recently took an ancestry DNA test and my brother and I are showing up as half-siblings. We have 1,559 cM shared across 36 segments and we are a 22% match. Apparently, this is below the full-sibling threshold. How accurate is this? This would be a huge shock to our family and could possibly destroy it.

Although I've enjoyed some of the info I've found on Ancestry, the monthly fee only seems to basically get you in the door. It seems any source Ancestry suggests or hints that come up practically drive you to a paywall every single time. Some of the additional services are owned by Ancestry as well.

Think I'll take my GEDCOM from my tree and stop providing them with more information just so they can sell it to other members for a premium.