7. Findmypast Features including Family Tree, Workspaces and More

Family Tree Building

Building your family tree is an immensely valuable activity while you are exploring your family history. Trees allow you to store all your family history in one central area. You can attach historic records that you find on our site to your trees. At Findmypast, we are continuously improving our family trees and finding new ways for you to get the most out of your Findmypast experience. We are continuously developing how we can enable researchers to benefit from other trees that already exist on Findmypast.

By adding information to this family tree, you acknowledge that you are responsible for the content you provide, including personal details about living individuals, and that you have appropriate permission to share it, including parental consent for children under 18, as set out in our Terms and Conditions. Please avoid adding sensitive information (such as racial or ethnic origin, health data, religious details or philosophical beliefs, political opinions, trade union membership, person’s sex life or sexual orientation, criminal history or records) about living people in trees or notes, to help protect their privacy and prevent unnecessary storage of special category data. If you believe your personal information has been added to another member’s tree without your permission and wish to object to its processing, please contact our customer support team at [e-mail].

One of the most valuable resources for a community of users researching and building their family trees is access to the historical research of others. Many people, often unknown to each other, share common ancestors within a few generations, and those people know different parts of the family tree. By joining forces and connecting this knowledge, we can all discover new parts of our family history – parts we never had access to before.

Privacy Settings

We provide you with privacy controls to manage your family tree and control who can see the information in it within the Tree Settings page. You are in charge of your family tree privacy and should familiarise yourself with how these controls work.

When you create your family tree or upload a GEDCOM (a file format used for exchanging genealogical data), the privacy settings are set to ‘share deceased ancestors’ and ‘share photographs of deceased ancestors’ by default. You can read more about how these settings work below.

Deleting your family tree

Within the View All Trees area you can find an option to Remove Tree. This option will remove your tree from your tree view and we will delete all the data related to living people in your tree. Please note that where you have not indicated that a person featured in your tree is deceased, we will assume they are not deceased unless they were born at least 110 years ago. If you want us to delete your entire tree from our records, please contact [e-mail]. If you have participated in Tree-to-Tree Hinting, deleting your tree will not delete branches you have shared with other users.

Removal of unauthorised data

We reserve the right (at our own discretion) to remove any personal information which you have included in your family tree about people who are living if we are alerted to the fact that this personal information was used without that person’s permission. If you become aware that your personal information has been included in somebody else's tree without your permission or is being misused in any other way on the website, please send an email to our Customer Support team at [e-mail] with details and we will investigate and, if necessary, remove this information. The information added about deceased persons is not considered personal data under this policy.

Sharing family tree data with FamilySearch

If you created a family tree between 1 November 2018 and 31 March 2019 (when we were testing a new community shared tree product) and you gave your consent, we shared your personal information with FamilySearch in order to provide you with the community shared tree service. The following items would have been shared with FamilySearch:

• Name
• Birthdate
• Gender
• IP Address
• Contributions to the community shared tree

FamilySearch is a data controller with a separate privacy policy. This policy was made available to all users who consented to share their data with FamilySearch and is available here. If you have any questions or concerns about your personal information please contact [e-mail].

Family Tree Features

Tree-to-Tree Hinting & Tree Searching

Sharing information about deceased ancestors is vital for Tree-to-Tree Hinting and Tree Searching. Your privacy settings are set to ‘share deceased ancestors’ and ‘share photographs of deceased ancestors’ by default, which means that information on your deceased ancestors may be offered to other members as a hint if their tree appears to share common ancestors with your tree. Your tree will be available to members actively searching for Findmypast trees that match your own. Users receiving a Tree-to-Tree hint or finding a matching person in a Tree search will also be able to view your tree.

Your tree will be available to members actively searching for Findmypast trees that match your own. Users receiving a Tree-to-Tree hint or finding a matching person in a Tree search will also be able to view your tree, but not any living people. For more detail on how Tree Search works please review this guide.

When ‘Share Deceased Ancestors’ is switched on all personal information about living people remains private to you. Information on your deceased ancestors may be offered to other members as explained above. For deceased ancestors, the following information may be offered as part of a hint, and will be available via Tree search:

• Timelines
• Facts and events – together with sources and attached records 
  Notes
• A VIEW ONLY version of your tree – showing information above - ONLY for deceased ancestors. (Any living relatives will be marked ‘private’ and no details will be shown). No other user will be able to edit or change your tree in any way.
• Photographs and media will ONLY be shared if the additional ‘Share photographs for Deceased ancestors’ permission are switched on. Findmypast recommends if you use this feature, you do not have images of living people on deceased ancestor profiles.

If your ancestors are not marked as deceased but were born more than 110 years ago we will assume they are deceased. Please contact [e-mail] if this is incorrect.

When ‘Share Deceased Ancestors’ is switched off other users will not be able to receive hints relating to deceased ancestors in your tree, and your tree will not be available in tree search results. Sharing photographs for Deceased ancestors will be switched off.

Tree Sharing

You can share your family tree with your friends and family. You will find the tree sharing option at the top of your family tree.

Your shared tree is “View Only”. Sharing your tree gives others the right to view your entire Public Tree. No one will be able to delete or rename your tree.

By inviting others to your tree, they will be able to view all the deceased people in the tree. You have the option to allow people to view living relatives in your tree.

They will be able to view any information about your ancestors that is not marked specifically as “Private” within their profiles.

Sending an invite 
You have the option to send an invite to your friends and family to view your tree via email, WhatsApp or Facebook.

The person you invite to view your tree must register with Findmypast before they can view your tree. The tree sharing link will expire after 7 days and the link to share your public tree can be shared with any number of people.

You are responsible for any information you add or share within your family tree. Anyone with access to your family tree can copy and share the details they read.

Remove access 
If you wish to remove an individual’s access to your tree, you should make your tree “Private”. This will remove access to anybody who has a link to your family tree. Otherwise, after 7 days, the link will expire and the people with that link will no longer have access unless you give them a new link.

Life Story

Life Story is a new feature that can generate a story using personal data relating to all people in your tree or workspaces except for living children under the age of 18.  The story may be created using top-tier third-party AI (artificial intelligence) provider. You can trigger the generation of Life Story by clicking the “Generate Life Story” button.  

Data shared with third-party AI providers may include genealogical information you’ve chosen to add, such as names, dates of birth and death, locations, family relationships, occupations, and other life details stored in your notes or family tree. This may also include relationship types, additional notes, or other information you’ve provided. In some cases, unstructured notes may be included as well. For Workspace features, this could also extend to information drawn from collections of records or datasets you’ve compiled, such as lists of names and details from sources like census records or employment registers.

 When you use the Life Story feature you should ensure if you provide personal information about people in your family who are living and not deceased, that you have the consent from the relevant individual to include that personal information on the website. We have implemented technical and organizational measures designed to prevent the transfer of children’s personal data to third-party AI systems. Your family member can always contact us objecting to their data processing and request data deletion. 

Make sure to double-check the AI output and verify the facts and data, as the tool may generate inaccurate or hallucinated content. If you come across inaccuracies generated by the AI Life Story feature, we would be grateful if you could report it to us by contacting our support team. This will help us improve our service. The AI outputs will not be stored unless you save it. For more details on data retention, please see section 15.

You can choose to share a Life Story by generating a sharing link. This link can be turned off at any time by going to AI Data Preferences found in My Account, which will immediately stop access to the shared Life Story.

Private Messaging

We have created private messaging to allow you to reach out directly to others who share ancestors.

Private Messaging is available through tree-to-tree hints and Tree Search.

When you see you have a common ancestor with another Findmypast member, you can reach out and share more about your family history.

To send a private message, you need to have a Findmypast subscription. You do not need to have a subscription to receive a message.

What personal information is shared with private messaging?

When you send a message, the other Findmypast member will see your full name. It is the same name you have registered on your Findmypast account. Within the private message, you can decide how much personal information you want to share.

Opt-out 
If you wish to opt-out or be removed from private messaging, please contact our customer support team.

Abuse/Blocking 
If you wish to block another member from messaging or you have received abuse from another member, please contact our customer support team immediately at [e-mail].

Workspaces

Workspaces is a feature that allows you to store and organise your ongoing research in one place. You can gather records and newspaper clippings into folders without attaching them to a family tree. This is useful when you have unanswered questions about an ancestor, or when you are researching a topic such as local history or a one-name study. 

Research Assistant

• Summary Generator - The Summary Tool can automatically produce an overview using the records you have selected within your Workspace. The summary is created using a tool which incorporates an element of AI (artificial intelligence). AI-generated content is intended as a research aid and may not always be fully accurate. We recommend checking any output against the original source records.

• Story Generator - The Story Tool takes records you have selected within your Workspace and produces a short narrative based on their contents. Like the Summary Tool, this uses AI and the output should be treated as a guide rather than an authoritative source. 
    

  Deleting your Workspace 
  You can delete a Workspace at any time from within the Workspaces area. If you have any questions about your data, please contact [e-mail].

AI Data Preferences 

You have the ability to switch off access to your personal information from these tools by going to My Account/AI Data Preferences.  By switching off the AI Control, these tools will not use personal information of living people found within your Workspace. If the AI Control is switched ‘off.’ We will restrict the use of historical records to those over 100 years. 

Research Agent

The Research Agent is an AI‑assisted feature available within Findmypast Workspaces that helps you discover relevant historical records and newspaper articles about people in your family tree or research projects. The Agent will provide useful suggestions, such as records or articles that may relate to individuals in your research.  You have the opportunity to review and verify the suggestions which are only visible to you unless you choose to share them.  

When you use the Research Agent, the feature reviews selected information about individuals you are researching – such as names, dates, locations, family relationships and relevant contextual notes you have added. It then uses this information to search our records and newspaper archives to identify potentially relevant matches. The agent may run automatically in response to actions within a Workspace (e.g., when you create a new record) to surface helpful suggestions. When it happens, we will provide clear just‑in‑time notice when the Research Agent is enabled in a workspace (including that it may run automatically on certain actions). 

We use enterprise AI services provided by trusted partners. You have meaningful control over the personal information used by AI features at account level. Your 'AI control' is located in My Account/AI Data Preferences. 

When the Research Agent runs:

• Only the minimum necessary information is included in a request to the AI service
• The request is sent securely to our AI providers to generate results
• The AI returns suggested records or articles, which are then shown to you within Findmypast

The Research Agent operates only when triggered by specific actions in your Workspace and does not run continuously in the background.

You can choose whether to use AI‑assisted features, and you can manage these settings within your Workspace. If you wish to disable this feature, the search functionality will still remain.

We have designed the Research Agent with privacy and security in mind. This includes:

• Limiting the data shared with AI providers to what is strictly necessary
• Using enterprise AI services that do not use your data to train their models
• Applying filtering to reduce the risk of sensitive information being processed
• Providing transparency and user controls over how AI features are used
• We keep this feature under regular review to ensure it continues to operate safely and in line with data protection requirements. If you experience inadequate behavior of the AI-assisted features, please notify us by contacting our customer support team.