tl;dr: Folks want to use ancestry to see where and how it goes. What do they need to know? Is there anything to avoid?

I’m not wild on the idea of submitting DNA swabs for a lot of reasons, the recent issues with genealogy.com’s data being a great example. What of tracing family tree by liniage?

  1. The free trial STATTS with ‘sign in using the following services’ I haven’t gone past that point because I don’t want to hand anything over til they show me where they want payment information, because free trials are seldom free and.

  2. The payment page for full signups constnatly ‘reassure’ that you don’t have to do anything each month it auto renews. my family’s gotten burned on auto renewals before where the other end basically refused to stop taking money out in spite of trying to end services.

  3. Anyone know about the library edition how to find out what libraries have access to that and what’s needed to sign in that way?

  • grasshopper_mouse@lemmy.world
    54·
    4 days ago

    It’s owned by the Mormon church, and that alone should steer you away from it. You don’t want the Mo’s to have your DNA.

    Just a quick recap of how shitty they are:

    Holocaust victims and Queen Mother posthumously baptized by Mormons

    The LDS Church Released “Egregious and Onerous” New Policies Restricting Trans Mormons

    Mormon church fined for scheme to hide $32 billion investment portfolio

    Topeka LDS missionaries mock Chinese people on camera

    Study: Utah women in tech report religious sexism

    • nieminen@lemmy.world
      21·
      4 days ago

      Thanks for this. As an exmo, this sort of post legitimately warms my heart. Spread their culty dirty laundry far and wide.

    • butternuts@lemm.ee
      3·
      3 days ago

      I believe this is innacurate. Do you have proof that ancestry is currently owned by the Mormon church?

      Wiki says Ancestry is owned by GIC Private Limited and The Blackstone Group since 2021.

      I know the Mormon company has their greedy little tentacles in many businesses so I wouldn’t be surprised if they somehow are connected with Ancestry but I’d need to see that first.

      Tangent - Fuck that business (LDS Church) that masquerades as a religion.

      Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestry.com

      • grasshopper_mouse@lemmy.world
        3·
        3 days ago

        That’s fair, it does appear that the church itself never owned Ancestry.com outright, so I concede I was wrong on that, however this article from the Harvard School of Divinity states that they did own it (see Mormons, Genetics, & Digitized Data:

        " In 2001, Mormon billionaire James Sorenson started one of the earliest genetic test kit companies, Relative Genetics, in part due to his religious interests.It was later bought by Ancestry.com, another Mormon company. While today, Ancestry is a publicly traded company, it uses LDS church records and the IGI. All LDS church members receive free memberships, and they can use their account to send relatives they find on Ancestry.com directly to the LDS church for a proxy baptism with the click of a button."

        While yet another article states : Is Ancestry.com owned by the Mormon Church?:

        "Since many of the digitized records on Ancestry.com can be accessed at FamilySearch, many people assume that the company Ancestry is owned by the LDS church. This is not the case! However, the two organizations have done massive amounts of collaborative work throughout the years. In fact, if you are an LDS member, you have free access to Ancestry’s World Edition. You can also obtain free access at different municipal libraries and other non-religious institutions.

        The company still to this day continues to grow, and though its past was highly influenced by people in the LDS church, the company has never been owned by the church itself.

        However, the company has truly been a pioneer in the online subscription business model. Today, Ancestry is considered a major technology company rather than a genealogical company. Though the company has done numerous amount of collaborations with the LDS church’s non-profit organization Familysearch.org, it has never been owned by the church itself."

        This article points out how Ancestry.com and FamilySearch are often confused (FamilySearch is in fact owned by the Mo’s) Ancestry’s Associations with FamilySearch:

        "Ancestry’s Associations with FamilySearch I think one of the reasons that people think Ancestry is owned by the LDS church is that they mix it up with FamilySearch.org.

        Who owns Family Search? The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

        Like Ancestry, Family Search is a global online genealogy service based in Provo, Utah.

        The two rivals have a history of partnership and collaboration.

        The LDS operates a global network of Family History Centres for genealogy research. Members get free access to Ancestry.com services from those centers.

        In 2013, Ancestry and FamilySearch started a significant collaboration in access to archives across both sites.

        When you’re logged into Ancestry and searching for records, the results may include documents that are indexed by FamilySearch.

        Is Ancestry.com Owned By The Mormon Church? Why do people mistakenly think that Ancestry is owned by Mormons?

        Is it just because Ancestry and FamilySearch are two online genealogy giants headquartered in Utah? No, I think there’s more to it than that.

        The original buyers of “Ancestry, inc” (Paul Allen and Dan Taggart) were both members of the Church of Latter-day Saints.

        Also, because the company is based in Utah, many of the staff were drawn from the Mormon community.

        Brigham Young University looms large in this regard. Unlike Ancestry, it is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

        I’ve already mentioned that Allen and his business partner were BYU alumni. A sizeable number of local Ancestry staff are alumni."

        So it appears ownership was never their thing, but a heavy influence remains. I assume that if Mo’s are running the show, or did at some point, that the church has de facto control over the business, because the people running the company would just bend over for the church at any point, whether that means giving them access to the DNA database unofficially, allowing them to search it any time for any reason, etc.