If you have an Ancestry account (paid or free), you may have received an email from them indicating that there has recently been a change in the Terms And Conditions of your account. Normally, these changes are minor. However, the significance of this particular change can be very impactful depending on your views on the use of your personal data. Essentially, once you upload anything to Ancestry, including photos, stories, etc., Ancestry has the right to use that data in any way they choose.
The new Terms And Conditions can be found in full at https://www.ancestry.ca/cs/legal/termsandconditions. Judy G. Russell of The Legal Genealogist has written a detailed blog post outlining the impact of the changes made and what impact they have on your account, the use of your data, and privacy. You can find it here1. Additionally, there is a post by DNAeXplained with additional info here2 which indicates (although not confirmed) that users may have up to 30 days to remove content that they do not wish Ancestry to have access to.
Before you panic and start removing your trees from Ancestry or calling to cancel your account, I would encourage you to consider the alternatives.
First, if you are currently using Family Tree Maker desktop software to manage your tree offline, you are able to mark content such as pictures, stories, etc. as “private” within FTM. Anything marked “private” will not upload to Ancestry when synced and therefore will not be a concern in regards to this change in the Terms And Conditions. This would be what I would recommend as the best option. I am a big fan of both Family Tree Maker and Ancestry and typically recommend using both. The offline version of your tree (FTM) offers more flexibility in working with your data as well as numerous other benefits while the online version (Ancestry) allows you to share with others and (optionally) can be made public so that others researching the same lines can contact you to collaborate. A simple sync keeps both trees updated with the same information.
If you are not currently a user of Family Tree Maker, you can purchase it online at the Software MacKiev store at https://www.mackiev.com/ftm/
Alternatively, you can begin reviewing your tree manually and removing any content that you do not wish to allow Ancestry to have rights to. This process can be very tedious and time-consuming.
There is a significant amount of discussion amongst users within various Facebook Groups on this subject. You can find them in groups such as Ancestry website users and Ancestry Canada
On a personal note, I’m not overly concerned about this change in the Terms And Conditions that Ancestry has implemented. Like most content that is put online, my family tree data has resided with Ancestry for a number of years and has been accessible as a public tree from the beginning. I’m sure that many genealogists have benefited from my research and have used my content in their own tree(s). However, I will likely review my photos and stories within Family Tree Maker and mark private anything that I feel is a concern.
1 Judy G. Russell, “One big change at Ancestry,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 4 Aug 2021)
2 Roberta Estes, “Clock is Ticking: In 28 Days, Ancestry CAN DO ANYTHING THEY WANT With Every Image In Your Tree,” DNAeXplained – Genetic Genealogy (https://dna-explained.com : posted 4 Aug 2021)
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