Ancestry.com and its historic faults

A technology review of Ancestry.com and Family Tree Maker software. They don’t work

By Ray Hanania

Ancestry.com online display (photos not displayed because the system is incapable of syncing)

Everyone has an interest in tracing their family tree, which is why Ancestry.com and their software robber barons Family Tree Maker have come up with a way to fleece you of a lot of money each year and prevent you from actually using the data that you collect from your family archives and history.

Yes, Ancestry.com is a multi-million scam designed to generate huge profits at your naive expense. You think you are creating something that you can share with your relatives and family, but you’re not. What you are doing is helping Ancestry.com to build up its own database, at your expense, and then build up its profits.

Here’s what’s wrong with Ancestry.com.

First of all, it costs about $350 a year to subscribe to the system. And if you don’t continue your subscription (like a heroin or crack cocaine addiction) you can’t keep it. But they can.

Once you have built up your data on Ancestry.com , there is absolutely no possible way for you to download that data directly to your computer to create a complete Ancestry Tree with photographs and records. All that data that you are uploading to Ancestry.com is filling up Ancestry.com’s database. And even if you designate your tree as “Private,” as many do, your data can be mined by others, boosting their profits at your expense.

The only way they allow you to download the data you collect online is to spend more money and purchase a truly in efficient and flawed software program called Family Tree. I have one for the Apple MAC system and it is so useless I wonder how they can even convince the public to pay $39 to download it.

It is really that bad.

For example, the problem is that the system is setup backwards. In other words, the only way to use the system to your advantage is to download the software first, create a family tree on your computer, and THEN upload it to Ancestry.com.

If you do like I did, and spent two years worth of subscriptions ($700) and built up a family tree online using Ancestry.com, what you have done is to make the software useless. The software doesn’t work.

Family Tree Maker Display. Photos not synced and documents are not synced either.

The stumbling block is an algorithm of code int he software that prevents you from linking the software file to the online file and then unlinking it. Once you have done that, you are screwed. No matter what you do, you CAN’T re-link your online database with your now worthless software.

You can manually start from scratch, and I literally mean scratch because the documents you thought you owned online really are not movable objects that you can share with the software program manually. So you have to go through each of the people and mine the data one item at a time. I have more than 431 people in my private online database and thousands of photos and documents tied to the tree. To correct the problem, I have to select the person in the software and then download the materials from the online system (or copy and capture from online display and then save to my computer). And then, I have to attached the now captured file to the person in the software.

In my database, that would be about 4,000 individual actions requiring 3 keystrokes each, or 12,000 actual processes in order to duplicate the online file and enter it into the worthless Family Tree software program.

Save your money.

Don’t buy the software.

Use Ancestry.com to build your online database. Each time you make an entry, make sure to put the photo or document in a directory on your computer. When you are ready to bail out on their money narcotic addiction, you’ll have everything together. Then, find a new software program unrelated to Ancestry.com or Family Tree Maker and input it. Use Ancestry.com to find those old documents and newspaper articles, and collect them.

Go someplace else.

To Serve Man (The Twilight Zone) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I feel like that guy in the Twilight Zone episode called “To Serve Man” where the Aliens land on Earth promising to bring Earthlings to their futuristic world, leaving behind a book that is titled “To Serve Man” and only discover, too late, that the meaning of the title is literal and has to do with the Alien’s dinner diet.

“It’s a cookbook,” the woman researcher yells to her scientist boss who is blocked by the Alien from climbing down from the spaceship ramp to freedom. “It’s a cookbook.”

Well, fellow Human Beings, “Ancestry.com is a CrookBook. It’s a CrookBook, folks. Don’t go there.”

(Ray Hanania is an award winning former Chicago City Hall reporter and managing editor of Illinois News Network online news website. He spends his money on crappy software so you won’t have to make the same mistake. Reach him at [email protected].)

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Ray Hanania

Blogger, Columnist at Illinois News Network Online

Ray Hanania is senior blogger for the Illinois News Network online news site. He is an award winning former Chicago City Hall political reporter and columnist who covered the beat from 1976 through 1992 (From Mayor Daley to Mayor Daley).

In 1976, he was hired by the Chicago community newspaper The Southtown Economist (Daily Southtown) and in 1985 was hired by the Chicago Sun-Times and covered Chicago City Hall for both. In 1993, he launched the “The Villager” Newspapers which covered 12 Southwest Chicagoland suburban regions. He hosted a live weekend Radio Show on WLS AM radio from 1980 through 1991, and also on WBBM FM, WLUP FM and shows on WSBC AM in Chicago and WNZK AM in Detroit.

Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media;In 2009, he received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. Hanania has also received two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild, and in 1990 was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.

Hanania’s writings have been published in newspapers around the world. He currently is syndicated through Creators Syndicate and his column is feature every Sunday in the Saudi Gazette in Saudi Arabia. He has written for the Jerusalem Post, YNetNews.com, Newsday in New York, the Orlando Sentinel, the Houston Chronicle, The Daily Star, the News of the World, the Daily Yomimuri in Tokyo, Chicago Magazine, the Arlington Heights Daily Herald, and Aramco Magazine. His Chicagoland political columns are published in the Southwest News-Herald and Des Plaines Valley News on several Chicagoland blogs including the OrlandParker.com and SuburbanChicagoland.com.

Hanania is the President/CEO of Urban Strategies Group media and public affairs consulting which has clients in Illinois, Florida, Michigan and Washington D.C.

His personal website is www.TheMediaOasis.com. Email him at: [email protected].

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