Ancestry, Findagrave just sent out a "privacy" update today, see below. They state "anything you enter into an interactive tool with our Services is Your Content." If you read the fine print, that's not true. The link states sure, it's "your content," but we can possess it, sell it and make money off of it even if you delete your content, tree and account. It's "their" content to use forever. They make over a billion dollars a year selling your content.
As I've stated before DO NOT POST YOUR PRIVATE PHOTOS, DOCUMENTS ON ANCESTRY! You are giving them your content for free to use, sell, license. Who cares if you own it if they have a license to possess, sell and make billions off of your content. If you do, you will see your private family photos advertised on the internet for sale. It happened to me.
I learned this lesson about private photos the hard way and had to threaten to sue Ancestry. I stupidly added a certain beautiful private one of a kind photo I took of my private document from 1899 in my old Ancestry account for one then private relative. A friend then told me not to do that because Ancestry sells your content for money. I removed the photo of that document. A week later I saw an ad for Ancestry and they were showing my document saying paraphrased "we have these documents on Ancestry. Join for $59 and you can have this beautiful document."
I sent them a letter saying I removed it and don't allow them to use my copyrighted photo of the 1899 document. They said they removed it. A week later it was still there. I told them to remove it again. It was still there. Then they tried to shake me by putting me in a support loop hoping I'd give up. I searched ancestry.com with a robot and still there. I sent a copyright notice then wrote a copyright lawsuit and sent it to them. It was finally gone. I bet they only blocked me from seeing it. I will sue for copyright if I find it again. I have the only photo on my computer and nowhere else.
This is how you use Ancestry.com safely. Create your tree on your computer using a free ged software. Add the research you do on Ancestry to that tree. You can download your Ancestry tree into your private tree on your computer to start. NEVER add your photos to Ancestry. You're also selling all the research you do on Ancestry for free. If you build your family tree there, another member can just start their tree and it will instantly link to your tree even if your tree is private. They will instantly suck all your years, decades of work into their tree. Nothing is private on Ancestry no matter what they say. It doesn't matter if your tree is set to private or you lie and list your relative as alive. I verified this by building a fake private tree with impossible names, dates. I asked a friend to start a tree with the fake name and sure enough my fake private tree showed up for them with all my fake data.
Remember if you upload to findagrave, geneastar, geneanet or any other Ancestry.com owned site, you are giving your content to Ancestry for free to sell for profits.
Another illegal thing they do is use copyrighted content. Someone will upload a copyrighted photo. Ancestry will sell it "legally" by stating the person who uploaded it stated it was copyright free. They know full well most of their photos, documents are copyrighted by others. This is how they suck up copyrighted content to sell for profits. It's so crazy to think people pay to join Ancestry, add their private content, do hours of research which Ancestry sells for free. It'd be like Facebook charging everyone a monthly fee and continuing to run adds on Facebook content. It's double dipping on profits.
Here's something I learned from Geneanet before Ancestry bought them. Someone asked why you can download your tree with photos and files on Geneanet but not Ancestry. Owner of Geneanet said you can technically do it on Ancestry but Ancestry doesn't allow it because they want to keep you dependent on paying the monthly fee. They make you pay the monthly fee out of fear you'll lose your tree, documents and photos. This is why I don't subscribe to Ancestry anymore. No real genealogist would because all their data came from somewhere else anyway. They're data scrapers, stealers in my book.
"3. Your Content
Certain Services may allow you to contribute content, including but not limited to: (i) family trees; (ii) family memories such as photos, audio/video recordings, and stories; (iii) record annotations, comments, messages, and input to interactive tools; and (iv) feedback provided to Ancestry about the Services (“Your Content”). Your Content that contains Personal Information will be treated in accordance with our Privacy Statement.
3.1 You Control Your Content
Ancestry does not claim any ownership rights to Your Content, control how you choose to share Your Content within the Services, or limit how you share Your Content outside of Ancestry’s Services. You can delete Your Content either by following instructions provided within the Services or by logging into your Account Settings and deleting your Account. However, if you submit feedback, record annotations, or suggestions about Ancestry or our Services, you acknowledge that it is deemed to be non-confidential and non-proprietary and we may use your feedback, record annotations, or suggestions for any purpose without any obligation or compensation to you.
3.2 Use of Your Content
"By submitting Your Content, you grant Ancestry a non-exclusive, sub-licensable, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, index, copy, publish, distribute, provide access to, create derivative works of, and otherwise use Your Content to provide, promote, or improve the Services, consistent with your privacy and sharing settings. You can terminate Ancestry’s license by deleting Your Content, except to the extent you shared Your Content with others and they have used Your Content. You also agree that Ancestry owns any indexes and compilations that include Your Content and may use them after Your Content is deleted.
3.3 Your Responsibilities for Your Content
You are responsible for the decision to create, upload, post, or share Your Content. By contributing or accessing Your Content you agree:
You have all the necessary legal rights to upload, post, or share Your Content;
Your Content does not violate any applicable laws.
Your Content that you share publicly will not include Personal Information as defined in our Privacy Statement about a living person without their consent. In the case of living minors, you will get consent from their parent or guardian;
All Your Content will comply with the Community Rules;
If you share Your Content publicly, other users may access and use Your Content as part of, or in conjunction with, the Services. We are not required to remove any of Your Content once it has been publicly shared.
You will use other Users’ content only within Ancestry Services and in compliance with these Terms and the other policies incorporated by reference;
Ancestry reserves the right to review Your Content and to screen for illegal content or other violations of these Terms, including the Community Rules, and to remove or disable access to illegal content or Your Content that we believe violates these Terms. We will also remove Your Content in response to a valid court order or as required by applicable law; and
Serious or repeat violations or offenses will subject you to account suspension or termination in accordance with Ancestry’s content moderation policies. Ancestry’s procedure for assessing and removing content is set out here."
