MY HERITAGE - what do others think?

More by accident than design I used to have a My Heritage Tree. Let me explain how that came about.

For many years my favourite stand-alone data base was –and still is - Family Tree Legends. I opted to have the data backed up on line in case my computer ever crashed and I could not access a backup. Then the owners of FTL (Pearl Street Software) advised they were selling out to Gencircles, whose flagship was My Heritage. I had heard of neither and as FTL continued to operate was not overly concerned.

Not long after I was contacted by My Heritage who with a degree of hyperbole advised they had millions of users and free of charge would be adding my Tree to their website. I was a little concerned but soon found I had another source of research which was free and accepted it could be useful; and it was! Before long I received messages (via MyH) from people who had matches with my Tree. They all seemed to be from Australia and a few from Canada and the USA; hardly any from the UK. Some of the Australian connections proved very useful as I was in the process of exploring an early UK emigrant family and the information provided by them was a real bonus.

After an initial settling in period MyH advised that whilst the free Tree would continue it would no longer be updated. That was reserved for those with subscriptions and they made an offer of a fairly modest 12 month subscription. I gave it some thoughts and a little reluctantly took out the subscription. Initial contacts continued and proved useful.

After some months the contacts became a real nuisance as person after person claimed to have ‘matches’ which at a glance clearly were nothing of the kind. As is my way I carefully explained why they were ‘flogging a dead horse’ and left it at that. Still the contacts continued. So to bring things to a close I decided not to renew at the end of the expiry period. That was two years ago and I have not subscribed since.

BUT, now we come to the crunch! MyH continued to carry my Tree and allowed others to contact me via email messages relayed by them. I stopped online backups from FTL so the MyH Tree could not be up-dated. I get regular reminders from MyH that my subscription has lapsed which I disregard. Meanwhile the ‘you have matches’ emails continue, although in reduced form. Inevitably one I received recently was a true match and as MyH would not permit me to contact other than by responding to emails, I resorted to providing my email address in the response and directing them to my Ancestry Tree.

So what do others think of My Heritage? Is it useful or a nuisance? I can of course take the ultimate decision to remove my Tree once and for all. This acts in the same way as Ancestry, after one or two ‘are you sure’ messages, the Tree gets deleted. As it has now been two years since my subscription elapsed they may decide to remove the Tree themselves; but somehow I doubt this and believe they will let the Tree continue unsubscribed with access restrictions in place.

For new subscribers they continue to offer a free Tree with up to 250 names. For up to 2500 names their subscription rate is £6.00 per month and unlimited at £7.95 per month but note both are billed annually (£72/£95.40). They offer me the £72.00 annual subscription keeping my Tree ‘as is’ and even update if I re-introduce the FTL backup option.

As I am not made of money and have two active subscriptions to Ancestry & FMP very much doubt I will continue with MyH and perhaps conclude the best course of action is to remove the Tree myself. However on the plus side MyH operates worldwide and they do indeed have many thousands of active subscribers hence the 2 or 3 emails per month. Three quarters of these may be false leads, but that still leaves the odd gem.

Sorry my posting is long but I wanted to put across the pros and cons of Heritage, so what do others think?

 

Thanks Tim and I do fully understand what you say only too well. Yes I think it is 'make-your-mind-up- time back at the ranch, and expect to be doing the same very soon. I only hesitate for a while as I am currently dealing (as I hinted in my discussion) with a genuine contact related to a maternal great aunt. However I have virtually sidelined MyH anyway and as soon the exchange bears fruit, will remove my Tree.

I note you said about changing email I can't do that (or do not want to more like) but I note they have an opt out on their contact emails, and hopefully, that should work if they continue to pester after deleting my Tree.

 

Have just bitten the bullet and deleted all my MyHeritage Trees (I found they had 4 from past incarnations), closed the account and opted out of any 'match' emails. Fingers crossed I will not be bothered again

 

I am curious about the timing of this. I only got into family history to any extent because I stumbled across Genesreunited and discovered I could patch together what I already knew of my family tree on a free site. This would have been 2005, so free sites are hardly a new phenomenon

 

Is Genesreunited still free? Registration and importing a Gedcom to actually have your Tree in Genes yes I believe that is still free. But to use the Tree and site facilities to its full (as I would want) you need to take out a Standard Annual membership which, at the last count in the UK, was just under £8. Very modest by today's standards and good value.

Genes may offer worldwide membership and varying cost memberships in other countries - perhaps even a PAYG means of payment - but I have no information on these.

Correct me if I am wrong (and of course you will) there are very few - if any - sites where you may host a Family Tree online for no fee without restrictions of access, or limitations of some kind, even if only having to view adverts! Just as with online temptations of 'Free Downloads' very few are free to use without restrictions of any kind. To use an old expression of my Grans, you get 'nought for nowt'

I will leave it there for others to comment

 

Bob, it all depends on what you mean by 'free'. You can host a family tree on Genes for no monetary charge (which is where I started) The price you pay for this is that people can contact you asking to see your tree (and without explaining why you should let them) For the zero subscription you can't initiate messages yourself, or see other people's trees. Ancestry will similarly let you post a tree but then (I think) allows free public access and (again similarly) doesn't let you send messages.

The point I thought I was picking up from you (and certainly from Tim) was that you don't need to have a paid-for site to post your tree online. If you want to do much more with it, I don't imagine any site will let you do that for nothing.

There are quite a few family history sites where you can get 'something' for nothing - including Lost Cousins, of course. Their hope is that you will find the free service inadequate and pay for a subscription. (Genes, I may say, seems to have gradually reduced what you can do with it without payment)

 

One of the virtues of AOL (in my opinion at least) is the ease of its reading and writing email from the dedicated and quite original AOL Desktop (on a home computer) or as with most other ISP's, online via its website. If using any of my home computers' I can save to folders originated by me either on the computer itself, or stored externally in folders I have set up on AOL. I can opt in and out of any of my 3 email addresses (4 with one used by my wife) and read any from any computer.

As much as I enjoy the simplicity of AOL email I am well aware of its limitations when asked to do things it is not set up to do. It would be a fair bet Alexander that what you suggest may well come under that heading.

Of my 3 AOL addresses one is PRIME and defaults to my MAIN computer which (for reading email at least) I use 95% of the time and every day. Even though I can quickly use the main to sign out of the prime and sign in to either of the other addresses, I am more likely to just open the AOL desktop when working on another computer (say for Genealogical purposes) and see if any emails are flagged.

So although I am quite capable of assigning one of the addresses for a specific use, I rarely do so. The bulk of all email is therefore received in my Prime account Inbox. When read, any email that survives being reported as Spam or Deleted, is saved automatically to an 'Old' folder. If I want to assign the email to a dedicated folder, I do so at this point on the receiving PC or at AOL.

So those are my options and why I choose to keep one prime email address and know of no way of causing email to default other than to its intended Inbox. I will out of curiosity however try to get AOL to comment on the matter, but hold out little hope.

 

I have no problem with any of that just have a 'bee in my bonnet' about the word 'free'. In any context whatsoever not just in genealogy. It is nearly as bad as luring people to spend by referring to how much they 'save'. I love to find things (like downloaded software for instance) that is truly 'free' in every sense of the word. I don't even mind 'firmware' where they openly suggest you can contribute, but is otherwise free. But woe betide if I download and find I need to subscribe to view the content!

However back to the topic, if one accepts something is free with limitations, then so be it. I also agree that Genes has gradually restricted usage over time unless, of course, one subscribes.

Having got that off my chest I will go and lay down.

 

A big YES!

 

Thanks Alexander, yes shareware is what I meant

 

Forgive me Peter, but do I not recall a fleeting mention of My Heritage way back in an early Newsletter? I recall it was less than complimentary and warned of its intrusive nature. At the time I had given up my subscription and was less than happy with it myself.

It's the sort of cautionary note I might now give, and indeed I did just that back in the summer when a fellow family researcher was warming to the idea of taking out a subscription.

 

It appears I was wrong about being unlikely to apply a 'rule' to filter mail as you describe. AOL have responded explaining that like their Spam filter (which I already knew about and use), other mail can be diverted to designated folders by setting up filters and explain how to go about it. I have the option to divert to a designated folder or let it arrive in the normal Inbox and receive an alert in AIM (AOL Instant Message) or even get sent to my mobile phone!

I was not previously aware of any of this (other than Spam) and just allowed mail to fall to the Inbox of the address signed to each computer. I will now give thought to see what, if any, filters are needed to suit my individual purposes. Thanks Alexander for pointing out that it could be done.

 

I am a little late coming in to this conversation but I will still express my opinion which appears to agree with all which has gone before.
When I first started my research My Heritage Family Tree Builder was my program of choice - it was free but more importantly I liked the layout of the tree and the way I could move from person or family to an adjacent one very easily.
I was not interested in an online presence at that time and did not allow my tree to be uploaded and got no pressure to do this or to pay for the extra "features" available. In fact I was totally pleased with the package and recommended it to many friends.

However there came a time that with the offer of a very low rate I took the plunge and uploaded my tree.
The "matches" I received where so way out that they were laughable. Needless to say I cancelled my subscription BUT continued using the program as it still met my needs perfectly.

Then there were several program updates and the pressure to upload my tree became greater even though it was now far too big to be accepted under the free of charge option. Also along with these "updates" I was finding that data was being corrupted and lost.
This continual nagging became far too much (even though I had turned off the option to automatically sync with my online tree it still continued to try to make me do it) and after taking some advice from various forums (especially Lost Cousins) I settled on Family Tree Maker - partially influenced by the included Ancestry subscription (I took the World option) but mainly because the 2014 version now had the option to display my tree just as I liked it on MHFTB. When you take in to account that you can buy FTM 2014 for about £16 (albeit with a very basic Ancestry subscription) I think the quality and flexibility of this program makes the switch from MHFTB a no brainer. I wonder how many other users have been pushed away by this aggressive approach - but then I am aware that they are only in it for the money and they gain nothing from anyone who does not use their paid for facilities.

I still receive these stupid mismatch emails but will follow the line of the others and remove my My Heritage tree from their site.