Warning about those free genealogy databases on sketchy sites

I tried using one of those free genealogy sites last month to track down my great-grandma's birth records and ended up with a virus on my laptop instead. The site looked legit with old photos and everything, but when I clicked to download a census file, it locked up my browser and started spamming pop-ups. Took me two hours with Malwarebytes to clean it all out and I still lost some bookmarks I had saved. What I learned is to stick with established places like FamilySearch or your local library's remote access for ancestry databases instead of random sites promising free documents. Has anyone else gotten burned by one of those fake record archive sites?

2 comments

2 Comments

beth55916d ago

Did you try using FamilySearch? I've had way better luck with it than those random free sites. It's run by the LDS church and they have most of the same records without the sketchy popups.

zara_miller16d ago

yeah but keep in mind FamilySearch is run by the LDS church and they've got a specific agenda with those records. they baptize dead people by proxy and that's a whole thing if you're not mormon. like they're not doing it out of pure historical interest you know? plus some records are locked behind their weird temple system so you literally can't see certain things unless you're a member. i found a baptism record for my great aunt who was catholic and it just felt kinda wrong. still use it for census stuff and birth indexes but i'm careful with what info i take from there.