Ancestry is making YOUR photos, THEIR photos

What does Ancestry do with my photos?

On August 03, 2021 Ancestry.com updated it's Terms of Service. As part of this update, you the user have given Ancestry the rights to do whatever they want with your photos and other ""User  Provided Content".  This licensing is discussed on the Ancestry corporate blog post.  The terms from the blog are cited below.  So, what can the user do about it?  Read on to see.

...by submitting User Provided Content through any of the Services, you grant Ancestry a perpetual, sublicensable, worldwide, non-revocable, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, publish, distribute, provide access to, create derivative works of, and otherwise use such User Provided Content to the extent and in the form or context we deem appropriate on or through any media or medium and with any technology or devices now known or hereafter developed or discovered. This includes the right for Ancestry to copy, display, and index your User Provided Content. Ancestry will own the indexes it creates. Notwithstanding the non-revocable and perpetual nature of this license, it terminates when your User Provided Content is deleted from our systems. Be aware that to the extent you elected to make your User Provided Content “public” and other users copied or saved it to the Services, this license continues until the content has been deleted both by you and the other users.

What can I do to keep Ancestry from using my photos?

Well, since they are letting you use their service, they are hitting you with the following legal jargon that creates a usage licenses and since it is Royalty Free, they owe you nothing in return.  you will limit your user experience, but you can mitigate this problem, somewhat.  Read on to find out how.

 

...perpetual, sublicensable, worldwide, non-revocable, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, publish, distribute, provide access to, create derivative works of, and otherwise use such User Provided Content to the extent and in the form or context we deem appropriate...

The simple answer is to delete the photos and they give you their word they wont use them.  Simple enough, right? Nope...

If your photos or other any other User Content is not deleted or was copied by someone else on Ancestry, then they can use it under the terms of service for that users account.

In short, the old rule of don't post anything on the internet that you don't want the whole world to see or access is the golden rule for Ancestry.  After all, most people do use this service to make genealogical connections and the ability to freely exchange this information is valuable to the users and Ancestry.  So, before you post ANYTHING on Ancestry, consider what you have learned here.

Please Note: We are not attorneys, and this should not be construed as a legal opinion or advice. 

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