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Welcome to Our Community

Ancestry’s mission is to connect everyone with their past so they can discover, preserve, and share their unique family stories. Ancestry members form a special community that engages and collaborates on family stories, makes new connections, communicates, and shares content. Family stories flourish when the community adheres to guidelines that facilitate engagement and respect among Ancestry members. Whether your journey begins with DNA or family history, we want everyone to feel welcome in Ancestry’s community.

These guidelines apply to all content you send, upload, or post to Ancestry, even if it’s not shared with others. If you come across something that violates these guidelines, infringes your rights, or contains illegal material, please contact us or file a report online and we will do our best to address the situation. For information on what types of complaints you are able to make, and our resolution process, see here. Thank you for being part of the community!

Site Access and Security

While using your Ancestry account or any Ancestry Services, you:

Must comply with all applicable laws.
Must have your own Ancestry account, and select a unique username and password.
May not share your Ancestry account password with anyone else.
May not permit a child under the age of 13 to publish information or post content through your Ancestry account.
Must provide valid and complete contact information, including a valid email address.
May not select a username that is hateful, obscene, or otherwise inappropriate, as determined by Ancestry, in its sole discretion.
Must never misrepresent your identity, either to Ancestry or to other users.
Must not interfere or attempt to interfere with the Services, including using any software program, virus or routine to block, obscure, modify any Ancestry Content or web pages, or to destroy another person’s software, hardware, or telecommunications equipment.
May not share content or communicate in a manner that you know is false or misleading, including impersonating any person, misrepresenting your affiliation with any person or entity (including Ancestry), falsely claiming an endorsement that you do not have, or misrepresenting that you are an employee or representative of Ancestry or its family of companies.

Community Safety and Prohibited Content

Please be aware that our Services contain content including historical images, documents, and narratives that some users may find objectionable or disturbing. While content may be retained for its historical value and factual connection to family trees, we aim to balance historical preservation with community standards. We encourage users to be considerate of others, and may ask you to remove certain content or make your tree private. We prioritize addressing content and behavior that is illegal, threatening, harmful, or abusive, including but not limited to:

Degrading, defamatory, vulgar, hateful, libellous, fraudulent, or obscene Content.
Content that incites or depicts hatred or violence towards any individual or group.
Sexually explicit, pornographic, or invasive Content.
Using our Services to stalk, harass, bully, threaten or verbally attack any user.
Abusing Ancestry employees personally or impacting Ancestry’s computing resources.
Content that publicly shares any living person’s personal, proprietary, or confidential information without their permission, such as photos of living individuals, sealed court documents, sensitive financial information, or contact information. In the case of minors, you’ll need the consent of their parent or guardian.

We have a zero tolerance policy for illegal content, especially child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) and content promoting terrorism. We may use processes to monitor and remove such content, including:

Maintaining an easy online reporting tool and phone number to enable users to report content to our moderation teams; and
Training content moderation teams to promptly investigate and remove such content when they become aware of it;
Using \"hash-matching\" technology to proactively scan and flag for further review content that may include child sexual abuse or exploitation;
Limiting access to certain features to paid users, and verifying the Identity of trialers and subscribers to combat fraud;
Limiting the types of media that can be shared via direct messaging (e.g. no video sharing); and
Allowing users to block other users and toggle off messages from other users.

Respect for Intellectual Property

While using your Ancestry account and the Ancestry Services, you may not:

Submit, post, share, or otherwise provide content that is protected by copyright or trademark, unless you have express permission from the owner of the copyright or trademark for such content. Read our Copyright Policy for more information. Please note if you share Your Content publicly, other users may access and use Your Content as part of, or in conjunction with, the Services. We are not required to remove any of Your Content once it has been publicly shared.
Reproduce, reverse-engineer, or sell any portion of Ancestry’s Services (including AncestryDNA test kits) or Ancestry Content, or systematically download data from Ancestry databases to make or populate another database for any other purpose.
“Deep link” or frame, inline link, or mirror any part of any Ancestry Services without Ancestry’s written permission.
Share, distribute, publish, or disclose any content, features, or information accessed through early access programs, beta testing, preview releases, or other pre-release functionality without Ancestry's prior written authorization.

Spam is Not Allowed

You may not use your Ancestry account or the Ancestry Services (or any information obtained through the Services) to post or make available any advertising, promotional materials, junk mail, spam, chain letters, or any other form of solicitation.

Find a Grave

While using Find a Grave, please keep in mind these additional guidelines:

Do not abuse tools for suggesting corrections or additions or for messaging other Find a Grave members about memorials they manage.
Please be sensitive to the diverse cultural meanings of burial grounds, cemeteries, and the deceased. We acknowledge that some Indigenous communities seek to honor and mark their graves, while others do not wish their graves to be found, photographed, or posted publicly. Do not post, transmit, or display content taken from or pertaining to federally and/or state recognized Native American lands and/or members without the express consent and permission of the respective and affiliated community, people, or tribal nation, or unless you are a citizen or authorized representative of said tribal nation.

Legal Details

The Ancestry Community Guidelines apply to all users of websites, services, and mobile apps that link to these Community Guidelines (including Ancestry, AncestryDNA, Newspapers.com, Find a Grave, Fold3, Forces War Records, Archives, WeRemember, and AncestryPreserve) and are intended to protect you and the entire Ancestry community. Any capitalized terms used in these Community Guidelines shall have the same meaning as set out in the Ancestry Terms and Conditions and Privacy Statement.

While these Guidelines are comprehensive, they are not exhaustive. Ancestry prohibits users of the Services from engaging in any activity that Ancestry, in its sole discretion, determines to be offensive, interferes with the rights of others, or causes harm to any person or entity. Ancestry can’t be responsible for the content our users create and share in the community, but we reserve the right to remove any posts or comments that violate these guidelines or our Terms and Conditions.

Serious or repeat violations or offences will subject the responsible user to account suspension or termination.

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