Changes to Tree Settings and Privacy Policy

We at Findmypast have spent the past few months continuously developing and testing a collaborative family tree and I am pleased to announce that we are now ready to turn on the first of many new community features – tree to tree hinting.

From July 1, the deceased ancestors in everyone’s trees will automatically become shareable. This means that some users will start to receive hints about deceased ancestors stored in the trees of others. When a good match is found, the ‘existing tree’ information will be offered to the new user as a suggested ‘branch’ to add to their research.

While most of the major family history platforms and services already do this, this is a step in a new direction for us and we want to reassure users that their privacy is of the utmost importance. Information on living individuals will remain strictly private and hints will only be shared between members who have common ancestry – likely, a distant relative.

Equally, the recipients of these hints will not be able to edit or see the original tree they were sourced from, ensuring users retain full control of their research.  

We also want to make it clear that this change is totally optional – if users don’t want their ancestors to be shared, they can change their settings back to private before July 1st. This will be fully communicated in a series of emails and on-site notifications. We’ll also send everyone a friendly reminder nearer the time and have updated our privacy policy accordingly.  

So, all we are essentially doing is changing the default settings from “private” to “shareable” on our existing Trees and giving customers the option to switch back to private if they so choose.  

We hope this new feature will enable users of all levels make to new connections and discoveries through collaborative research and look forward to sharing further updates with you in the near future. If you have any questions in the meantime or want to know how to switch a tree back to private, please see our Tree Change FAQ page: https://www.findmypast.co.uk/tree-change-faqs.