Ancestry Private Media

[ikas]

I do not use Ancestry to build my trees as I upload my GedCom file so I am a novice at building trees on Ancestry. Just tried a small one to try to answer this question but no luck so far. Is it possible to make an image private in a public tree? I know you can make individuals private but it is just the image I want to make private not the person.

[Spelk]

Hi ikas,
I do not know if what you want to do is possible. But why do you wish to upload a photo which only you can see? Easier to keep it private by not uploading it.
If you wish to share it with certain people then you could upload a dummy image which says something to the effect of “ask me if you want me to see this photo”

Maybe you could achieve what you want by having two trees online. One has no photos and is public and one with photos which is private but you can let others have access to it.

I have for some time had a wish that I could, on my Ancestry tree, share the notes which are included for most of the people - but only to selected people. That would let them see far more than the bare facts of bmd dates and places. However it seems that giving them a guest access will not do. For them to see my notes I have to give them full ownership rights which would let them edit anything on my tree or even delete it. Not a disaster if they did delete or corrupt it as it is just a copy of part of the main tree on my home computers. But I would be happier if they had Read Only access.

[neilpage]

I think you will find it really difficult to keep photos private that are included from a public tree on Ancestry. Anyone can screenshot your pictures and then re use them as their own. I have had some of my photos hi jacked this way on Ancestry, at first I was stunned when this happened but then I realised that the people who reposted my pictures also had a connection to the people in them, I was the lucky one with the original!
Some of my pictures from Ancestry appear on other sites across the world who knows where they will end up,

[ikas]

Thanks both for your replies. I have had a similar experience with photos. I shared them with someone who has a public tree and they have spread far and wide. I don't mind but this is one photo I don't want to spread as it is not mine.

I've looked at it in more detail and I think you are correct. Just not feasible.

[Spelk]

Having listened to a recent radio programme "Your Face Belongs To Us" I am wondering if we can trust Ancestry, Flickr etc to keep images to themselves even if we mark them as "Private".
I think I will have to go and do some online purging of images of living and recently deceased people.

[Ray T]

What goes around comes around. i.e. You post a photo. on Ancestry, people copy it and eventually Ancestry sends you an automated email hint to tell you that they’ve found a photograph you might be interested in. Yes, you’ve guessed it!

Computers are often more stupid than some people.

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

Images can't be 'private' and even if they are later deleted or the tree made private any copies taken by others and attached to trees will remain visible. Once an image appears online via the likes of Ancestry or Flickr it's impossible to control what happens to it. Even if there's an option to disable downloading it's easy to screenshot the page and unfortunately the attitude is generally 'if it's online it's available'.

I've lost track of the times my own images come up as hints, one person in particular has a habit of viewing my tree anonymously, screenshotting things  and posting them to their tree. I know a lot of their tree is using details from mine as the information and even the odd typo are identical. I'm always baffled why they feel the need to do everything in secret rather than openly view a tree but that's people.

[ikas]

Thanks for the confirmation, Glen. I will just have to keep it on my tree on my PC.