If you think the NSA/CIA/FBI are Scary, Have you ever used Ancestry.com?

[dballance]

I've been using Ancestry.com to put together my family tree. It's very scary how easily they come up with records on people and link them all together.

Then, of course, I'm only helping them out by building my family tree. Linking people together -especially the older records with simple name variants for the same person.

[quinnox]

1. nope

but I can see big differences between voluntarily providing info to get back history, and having the government keeping tabs on you, just because they can.

[Romulus Quirinus]

26. I think OP is commenting on our technology's ability to uptake data and produce connecitons. nt

[think]

2. It is amazing what Ancestry.com can do but that pales in comparison....

JMO

[baldguy]

8. It's exactly the same thing.

Exactly. The. Same.

[MNBrewer]

9. Ancestry.com can put you in jail???

[think]

11. Maybe we should just hire Ancestry.com to spy on us and save a few bucks...

[baldguy]

12. You don't think there are corporations that would if they were given the chance?

The only thing stopping them is the govt.

[think]

10. If I keep telling myself that while clicking my heels will I get back to Kansas too?

[baldguy]

14. That's it: be suspicious of govt; trust corporations.

[think]

15. I trust neither....

[Whisp]

17. Norquist seems to have influence here lately, a lot of influence.

wtf, heh?

the thick is so thick here sometimes, .,.. fuck it, I'm going to kill some Dragons for a while.

[think]

18. And comparing the NSA to Ancestry.com is just brilliant......

[magellan]

3. I've been an Ancestry member for several years

...and the thought had occurred to me! And they don't have supercomputers or half the info the NSA does on each of us to make their correlations.

[dballance]

13. With the Billions the Mormons have - don't bet they don't have Supercomputers.

They may have them but are just a lot more secretive about it.

A good supercomputer doesn't cost what it used to.

[magellan]

21. Point taken

But the records Ancestry has access to for our ancestors aren't nearly as numerous as what's being kept on us by the NSA! Ah, the good ol' days.

I imagine our descendants will find us boring as hell, just from what they can find online....

[jmowreader]

23. They also have microfilm

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/granite-mountain-records-vault

Actually, microfilm is their primary means of storage.

[dballance]

24. Microfilm is a good choice for the types of records they store for the length of storage they want.

As long as the microfilm is stored properly so it doesn't deteriorate it's going to be readable with very minimal equipment that doesn't change all that much. I bet they have some old salt mine caves that they can easily keep at the right temperature and humidity for storage.

If they had chosen magnetic tape not that long ago they'd find themselves with a bunch of stuff on outdated formats. Even now, DVD and Blu-Ray still change so rapidly they're not something I'd choose for the long-term, and I mean really long-term, storage they want to do. Who knows what will be next. I haven't done any reading lately on the "latest and greatest" formats that will be introduced.

[jmowreader]

25. Go to the link I provided. You will be amazed.

Forget the "old salt mine caves" thing. These guys bought Granite Mountain in Utah, which is made out of what its name suggests it is, and bored huge tunnels in it to put their microfilm storage rooms in. It is designed to survive a nuclear war, and the pictures they have of it look very much like a military command bunker.

I know they are also computerizing their holdings, so anyone in the world can access them. IIRC they've got several IBM mainframes for this.

[dawg]

4. They don't know who you're calling, and when, and ...

where you were when you called.

And some say that's just the tip of the iceberg. But, regardless of that, there's too much potential for abuse with just the metadata.

[GreedIsGood]

5. Actually it is

They seem to have many records with them.

[DURHAM D]

6. Mormons keep good records.

[GeorgeGist]

7. Be careful.

[Arkansas Granny]

16. And these records are all public records and none of the info

has been obtained by spying on citizens. Big difference.

[Ruby the Liberal]

19. I have a family member who is a paid genealogist

She quit using that site years ago because of how corrupted and unreliable the information on it became. Just a heads up on that.

[Gormy Cuss]

20. +1

And most of the good data on ancestry is available elsewhere for less cost.

[flamingdem]

27. Really? I want to say for me it was a fantastic tool to find connections

Though I'm a little uneasy with all that information being available, privacy is an issue when one shares a chart.

What did you find out about the corrupted information?

[Ruby the Liberal]

31. People that weren't really relations were listed as such

Meaning the records are not accurate. If it is just a cursory/curiosity search, then probably no harm, but this relative does research for claims like Daughters of the Revolution and Mayflower decedents, so her work had to be unimpeachable.

No offense to the LDS, but when your goal is how many people you can identify and "proxy baptize", records can get sloppy. As our own family has a branch of LDS dating back to the mid 1800s, our own records are a complete mess according to her. She had tried to clean them up - but when she checks, people she knows for a fact are not in the family line keep being added back in.

This is a woman who travels the country for clients, digging into dusty physical records in historical society basements and doing pencil rubbings on gravestones. I trust her on this. That, and I know how insane the LDS 'wing' of my currently living family is about proxy baptizing and documenting "relatives" that are not even in our family line.

[flamingdem]

33. I first found online records due to google

and the way I started tracing things was via Daughters of the American Revolution.

Those records were pretty accurate.

Then I got lucky finding someone who had done a lot of work on ancestry.

The census data information was helpful.

[winter is coming]

30. +1. I went there once, years ago, and was unimpressed.

I looked back through parts of my family tree I know well, and about half of the people I was looking for were completely absent. For example, a family where ma and pa had a slew of kids, yet only half of them were findable. They had the year of my grandfather's death wrong. They didn't have my dad's death at all, although he'd been dead at least five years.

[Ruby the Liberal]

32. That sounds about par for the course

Wikipedia open-editing, meet ancestry.com

[dballance]

37. Thx for the heads up. Since I'm very basic it seems okay.

I'm not surprised it's not good for a professional. But rank amateur that I am it's useful and has been accurate for me.

[KinMd]

22. Anyone can go to the county Registry of Deeds and see what most people paid for their homes..

and who the 1st and/or 2nd mortgage is with

[etherealtruth]

28. Heck ...

Many local municipal (assessing or auditor's) records can be accessed on-line from the comfort of your home.

[mrs_p]

29. using that site, my mother found her long lost half-siblings

and discovered her biological father had died

[applegrove]

34. Do you have to pay to get the novel records on your family member or is it all free once you've

paid for your membership and have a username?

[flamingdem]

35. I got a two week free trial and found many things

I recommend it. After that there is some limited access.

[dballance]

36. So far all inclusive w/ membership

I haven't run into any up charges yet. But I'm doing very basic stuff.