Neither sturm nor drang

Yes, it’s that time again.

Time for Ancestry to update rules of the road — the terms of use that govern its interaction with its customers and its privacy statement that goes both ways: what users are supposed to do and what Ancestry is supposed to do.

So… we now have a new Privacy Statement¹ and a new set of Terms and Conditions, both dated 18 September 2023.²

And, yes, The Legal Genealogist has done the usual word for word comparison between the new documents and the old ones.³

And, with very few exceptions, the entirety of the changes in Ancestry’s Terms and Conditions and its Privacy Statement can be summed up briefly.

Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.

The bulk of the changes are language simplification or clarification. It’s now just a “DNA sample” and not a “DNA saliva sample,” just as one example.

The next biggest category is adding language because of changes in the law in a few U.S. states and in Brazil.

And then there’s the obligatory changes in the arbitration language to make having a real knock-down-drag-out fight with Ancestry over anything it does as hard as it can possibly be.

So… what might we really care about? Not much, really, but a few things to be aware of that might impact someone out there:

In the Privacy Statement:

• AncestryDNA registration now requires a birthdate and not just a year of birth. Ancestry says that’s to be able to “appropriately assign ownership of accounts.”⁴

• There’s now an explicit warning about things a user might do that would expose information about living people: “Other information about living people may be visible if included in a public media gallery, or if you choose to publish the information outside your tree.”

In the Terms and Conditions:

• Forces War Records, a new Ancestry service primary for British Commonwealth military records, has been added to the list of services to which the terms apply.

Ancestry has added using artificial intelligence to its list of things a user may not do with its content.

• The age of consent for DNA testing is now phrased as the age where the test is offered, rather than as a flat age 18.

• Community standards are now the same across all Ancestry services, including Find A Grave which had had its own standards previously.

• There’s a specific clarification that experimental and new features “may not be available to everyone. Ancestry makes no promises that experiments or new features will remain available or be expanded.”

• And there’s an expanded warning that violations of the rules can get your account dinged. “Serious or repeat violations or offenses will subject you to account suspension or termination. … We reserve the right to limit, suspend, or terminate your access to the Services if you breach these Terms, including the Community Rules.”

And that’s pretty much it this go ’round.

No sturm, no drang.

Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Ancestry’s annual rules update 2023,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 18 Sep 2023).

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