• RootsWeb.com Acquired by MyFamily.com
• E.T. Phone Home
• Free Online Topographic Maps
• New Book: Genealogical Research in England’s Public Record Office
• New Brunswick Searchable Online Databases
• The Shady Side of the Family Tree
• Home Pages Highlighted

RootsWeb.com has been growing in popularity for seven years. RootsWeb began in 1993 as the RootsWeb Surname List. The list was paired with a search engine, allowing users to search a surname, like Abbott or Abbey, and connect to links that would provide more information about that specific name. Eventually the site grew to offer obituary lists, message boards, an ancestry search-engine list, calendars, and a list of volunteer genealogy projects. The surname list now contains about 700,000-plus family names submitted by more than 75,000 genealogists.

While the popularity grew, so did the expenses. In 1996, RootsWeb began accepting donations from researchers to help support the Web site. Apparently the income did not grow as fast as the expenses, and the non-profit operation was facing a bleak financial picture. The acquisition by MyFamily.com, Inc. will provide the RootsWeb.com site the financial backing to expand its focus on preserving, sharing, and exchanging family history research. As part of the MyFamily.com network of sites, the RootsWeb.com site will now be able to add technology tools to its capabilities, as well as growing its family research content and genealogical resources.

MyFamily.com and RootsWeb.com did not disclose financial terms of the transaction.

Here is an excerpt from the press release issued by MyFamily.com:

MyFamily.com, Inc., the leading online family network, announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire RootsWeb.com, the oldest and largest free community genealogy site. RootsWeb.com will continue to be free to all users and will maintain its own unique URL at http://www.rootsweb.com.

"This is truly a winning combination for both organizations and for the millions of users who make up our audiences," said Greg Ballard, CEO of MyFamily.com, Inc.

The union will provide RootsWeb.com with the financial backing to expand and the business structure needed to focus on preserving, sharing, and exchanging family history records. As part of the MyFamily.com network of sites, the RootsWeb.com site will be able continue its tradition of free access to information with additional technology tools, increased family research content, and a greater range of genealogical resources.

"RootsWeb.com fits well with the MyFamily.com vision of creating the largest and most active online resource for families and family history research," said Dr. Brian Leverich, founder of RootsWeb.com. "This agreement will expand the number of RootsWeb.com users and content contributors. At the same time, we have ensured that RootsWeb.com content, services, mailing lists, and Web pages will remain free, while allowing the site to provide more functionality and resources to a larger audience as a result of our being part of the MyFamily.com network."

Ancestry.com, part of the MyFamily.com network, has a seventeen-year history of publishing award-winning books, magazines, and CDs, and currently offers more than 600 million records and over 2,500 databases. More than half of the data is freely accessible to all Web users. Ancestry.com also hosts, free of charge, the Ancestry World Tree and Online Family Tree software, which allow users to connect and collaborate with other researchers who are working on the same lines. Ancestry.com users retain ownership of their data, and the company pledges never to charge for access to that data or to publish it. For those who prefer to keep their information a little closer to home, sister site MyFamily.com allows users to create free, private sites that can be used to post family history data, share news and photos with family, chat online, and much more.

RootsWeb.com is a valuable resource for family historians, with interactive guides, discussion lists, and numerous tools for tracing one's ancestry; it hosts more than 17,000 independently authored Web sites and about 19,000 mailing lists. All of these services will remain free to users.

As part of its ongoing commitment to the genealogical community, MyFamily.com, Inc. will also continue to support RootsWeb.com-affiliated volunteer, non-profit organizations, such as The USGenWeb Project, Immigrant Ship Transcribers Guild, The Free Births, Marriages, and Deaths Projects, and other groups that provide free genealogical content.

The MyFamily.com acquisition of RootsWeb.com promises to make it easier than ever for family historians everywhere to discover their heritage.

Read the full press release.

This new marriage strikes me as a win-win situation for both MyFamily.com and RootsWeb.com. (I should point out that MyFamily.com sponsors this newsletter, so I may be accused of bias. However, I think I would make the same statement even if this newsletter had a different sponsor.)

MyFamily.com benefits because they get an expanded customer base. I suspect that a high percentage of RootsWeb.com’s users will be attracted to the MyFamily.com family of Web sites, even while continuing to use RootsWeb.com on a regular basis. The advertising potential is enormous; the popularity of RootsWeb.com provides an opportunity to get the Ancestry.com name in front of a lot of genealogists. In May, RootsWeb.com had over 149 million page-views (according to Nielsen NetRatings combined home and work statistics), sent over 155 million e-mails, and handled over two million downloads of files from the various archives hosted at RootsWeb. Those numbers have to be appealing to MyFamily.com.

RootsWeb.com obviously benefits, as they don’t have to close their doors for financial reasons. Also, MyFamily.com can provide advertising dollars that were always beyond the reach of RootsWeb.com. I bet RootsWeb.com’s popularity will increase as a result of this acquisition.

There may be a lesson here for other non-profit genealogy sites: It takes financial power to succeed. Voluntary donations alone probably will not pay the bills. In order to survive and grow, non-profit sites need to find benefactors, whether the benefactors provide sponsorship, advertising, acquisition or other alliances. RootsWeb.com seems to have found a very good benefactor.

E.T. Phone Home
Is Big Brother watching you?

Several recent magazine articles have raised questions about online privacy. Time Digital, a publication of Time, Inc., has a front-page article in the current edition entitled, "Who’s Watching You? How to Protect Your Privacy." The article describes a number of programs that surreptitiously collect information about the person using the software and then secretly send that data back to the software producers or some other organization. All of these programs will report on the user’s personal data without his or her knowledge. Data reported may include such information as Web sites visited, mouseclicks (especially those clicks made on various online advertisements), software installed on the hard drive, e-mail addresses, etc. In theory, these programs can report almost anything. It is possible that such programs could monitor your usage of an online bank account or stockbroker. However, most of them are much more benign, reporting only on your usage habits, the places you visited online, and the software you have installed.

The article in Time Digital doesn’t mention any genealogy products by name, but it does mention zBubbles, Aureate/Radiate (found in more than 400 shareware programs), Conducent and SurfMonkey. The Time Digital article quoted quite a few industry privacy experts who are exposing these programs and their intentions. These programs are sometimes referred to as "E.T. Phone Home" programs because they deliver information to "headquarters" without the knowledge of the person who is using the program. You can read the entire article and several accompanying "sidebar" articles at: www.time.com/time/digital/reports/paranoia/

Another article by Simson Garfinkel in the current online Salon Magazine describes his experience and dismay with a children’s program produced by Broderbund, a division of Mattel Interactive. He became suspicious when using his laptop on board an airliner. There was no modem connection available, but his laptop suddenly attempted to call Garfinkel’s Internet connection. Garfinkel wrote, "So I started hunting around the laptop's operating system to see what was going on, and I discovered that a program called ‘DSSAgent’ was silently running in the background." Garfinkel investigated and found that a children’s program he had installed for his daughter was trying to connect to Broderbund. Garfinkel wasn’t even using the program at the time of his airline trip; the children’s game was simply resident on the laptop and not being used. Garfinkel was incensed that someone was attempting to track his daughter’s usage of a computer program. When later queried by Garfinkel, Debbie Galdin, a spokeswoman for Mattel Interactive, explained that DSSAgent is part of a service that Mattel calls "Brodcast." Galdin said, "Brodcast is designed to provide additional content for our more up-to-date products. The program does not send personal information to Mattel and does nothing to identify a particular user." You can read the entire Salon article at: www.salon.com/tech/col/garf/2000/06/15/brodcast/index.html

Of course, I am aware that Mattel Interactive is the former parent company of genealogy.com, producers of Family Tree Maker, which is one of the most popular genealogy programs in the world. Before Mattel acquired Family Tree Maker, the program was produced under the Broderbund label. Since Garfinkel had experienced a "phone home" program produced by Broderbund, I decided to see if Family Tree Maker is "phoning home" and sending information about my usage patterns to its producers.

I had a PC that never had any Broderbund or genealogy.com software installed on it, so I decided to use that system for the test. First, I ran REGEDIT, a Windows utility program supplied by Microsoft that is used to examine and modify Windows Registry contents on Windows 95, 98, NT and 2000. (The Windows Registry is the "heart" of Windows, it keeps track of installed software and performs numerous other functions as well.) I didn’t find any reference to DSSAgent in the Windows Registry on this PC. Then I installed Family Tree Maker version 7. During installation a pop-up window displayed the following message:

Family Tree Maker incorporates Brødcast technology that keeps you informed of new product features, free offers, and other important news for Family Tree Maker users. If you select to enable Brødcast now, you may disable it later by checking the "Deactivate Brødcast for this product" checkbox in the introductory screen each time you launch Family Tree Maker.

Some portions of Brødcast copyright © 1990-1997 Pretty Good Privacy, Inc. All rights reserved.

Enable Brødcast now?

The letter "o" in Brødcast had a slash through it, similar to what is common in Scandinavian languages. This is also common in Broderbund products, so I assume that Broderbund wrote Brødcast. I elected to enable Brødcast.

Once Family Tree Maker was fully installed, I ran REGEDIT again to see if DSSAgent was there. Sure enough, it was. REGEDIT reported the following as a program that is run automatically at start-up: C:\Windows\BBStore\DSS\dssagent.exe. Obviously, Family Tree Maker had installed this "agent" and was fully capable of providing additional content for Broderbund’s more up-to-date products, as the Mattel spokeswoman had said.

When I started Family Tree Maker, I did notice a checkbox to "Deactivate Brødcastfor this product" in the start-up splash screen. I decided to check the box, but it took me three tries. The splash screen with checkbox is only visible for about three seconds, so you have to be quick with the mouse to disable Brødcast. I got it on the third attempt. That should stop Family Tree maker from reporting about my usage.

I went back to the REGEDIT program and noted that DSSAgent was still in the Registry and therefore theoretically capable of sending data without my knowledge. I cannot tell if Family Tree Maker really would send data or not, only that the capability was still there. I deleted DSSAgent from the Registry. Then I went to C:\Windows\BBStore\DSS and deleted dssagent.exe. Now I am certain that DSSAgent will not operate on my PC.

Is this an invasion of your privacy? I’ll leave that up to you. Personally, I suspect that the Mattel Interactive spokeswoman was correct when she said, "Brødcast is designed to provide additional content for our more up-to-date products. The program does not send personal information to Mattel and does nothing to identify a particular user." I have met many of the senior managers involved with the Family Tree Maker products, and I have always found them to be honorable people. I doubt that they are using the data obtained for any purposes other than their stated intent.

However, I must admit that this knowledge of someone "watching" me creates an uneasy feeling. The installation screens warned about "Brødcast technology that keeps you informed of…" but didn’t say anything about the program keeping Broderbund or genealogy.com informed.

To be sure, such "spy programs" appear to be legal. I’m no lawyer, but I doubt if the program’s producers have violated any U.S. laws. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act contains some broad language about unauthorized access to computer data. However, it doesn’t give detailed legal definitions of what data is protected that would apply to the latest wave of "E.T. Phone Home" programs. The article in Time Digital agrees and then says, "There’s a good chance Congress may step in and pass new legislation that bans computer spying more directly."

A related news item attests to the high-level attention this issue is receiving. This past week, Presidential candidate George W. Bush granted an interview to ZDNet. While not referring specifically to any of the programs mentioned here, Mr. Bush was asked about computer programs that surreptitiously send usage data to the producers. Mr. Bush replied, "I think there ought to be laws that say a company cannot use my information without my permission." Bush added, "We can live in a private world." You can read more about the interview at: www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2591261,00.html

In the meantime, I would suggest that you think about your own privacy? Do you want your programs to report on you? If not, I suggest that you let the producers of your installed software know about your opinion.

As a follow-up note, I will say that I have mentioned one specific genealogy program in this article. I am not sure if there are other genealogy programs that contain this "reporting home" capability or not. However, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were others.

What is your genealogy program reporting about you? How about all the other programs installed on your system? Politics aside, you may agree with Mr. Bush that we should live in a private world.

Free Online Topographic Maps
Looking for that land your ancestor owned? Or perhaps you are tracing the route your ancestors traveled during their relocation to a new life? Topographic maps have always been a great resource. Here in the United States, we have rather easy access to detailed maps printed by the United States Geologic Survey, a government agency. These maps are available at many retail outlets as well as by mail order. Now the same maps are available online.

Maps a la carte, Inc. and their Internet site TopoZone.com have every USGS 1:100,000, 1:25,000, and 1:24,000 scale map for the entire continental United States and Hawaii. Maps of Alaska and Puerto Rico will be added soon. The maps are scanned versions of same maps sold by the USGS. They are very detailed, which has a few disadvantages as well as the obvious positive points: if you are using a dial-up modem at 56,000 baud or slower, you will have to be patient while these images appear on your screen. You can also specify small, medium or large maps. In this case, the size refers to the number of pixels displayed. Large maps take a lot longer to display. This week I used both a high-speed connection and a 28,800-baud connection; both worked well, but I had time to get a cup of coffee while retrieving large maps on the slower connection.

You can also print maps on your local printer. I tried that on a black-and-white laser printer but wasn’t very impressed. The output looked like a photocopy of a map. I suspect that a color printer would produce much better output.

The method of finding maps is simple. In fact, it is much simpler than buying printed maps. Whenever I purchased a printed map in the past, I had to first determine the name of the map. Typically, this is the name of the largest town or village or some other prominent feature displayed on that map. If my ancestors lived in a smaller village, a bit of detective work was required to determine which map contained their geographic area. With the online version, you can simply enter the name of a location, and the right map soon appears. Of course, if there are two or more locations in the U.S. with the same name that you entered, you will need to narrow the search.

For instance, my paternal grandmother was born in Greenville, Maine. I went to the search menu and entered a location of "Greenville" and left the entry for State to the default of "Any." Would you believe there are 55 locations in the United States called Greenville? The Web site listed all of them, so I clicked on the one for Greenville in Piscataquis County, Maine. A few seconds later, I was looking at the topographic map for the small town on the big lake. If I had entered the state name in the first search, no intermediate selection would be necessary.

Another method of searching is by latitude and longitude. This can be very useful when using the Geographic Names Information System database, or when you have been traveling with a GPS receiver.

When a map is displayed, the user can zoom in for a closer look at the details on a different scale. The exact scales available may vary from one part of the country to another. When displayed, the map also has small "arrows" that represent the eight major compass points: north, northeast, east, southeast, south, etc. Clicking on one of the arrows will display the adjoining map in that direction.

The maps at TopoZone.com cover only the United States. When I displayed maps for a couple of Maine towns along the New Brunswick border, the maps actually went quite a few miles into New Brunswick. Interestingly, the mapped features in Maine were shown in full color, but those in New Brunswick were in black-and-white. I could not search for any locations outside the United States.

TopoZone.com is a great service. I mentioned genealogy uses, but obviously it can be used for other purposes as well. MapQuest and other sites will display highways, but then only leave white spaces between the roads shown. TopoZone.com fills in those big blank spaces.

All of the maps on TopoZone.com are free. To look for yourself, go to: http://www.TopoZone.com

New Book: Genealogical Research in England’s Public Record Office
This week I had a chance to read a newly updated book. The full title is "Genealogical Research in England’s Public Record Office: A Guide for North Americans, 2nd Edition." Authors Judith Prowse Reid and Simon Fowler

The Public Record Office in Kew, a London suburb, contains the largest collection of genealogy-related records available in England. It even has the Domesday Book of 1086. M ore modern documents would include census records, probate documents, emigration records military, taxation, court, and Parliamentary records. It covers both England and Wales. This book is aimed at North Americans who are not familiar with the Public Record Office, or PRO as it is often called. While genealogy newcomers in England might also find this book beneficial, the primary focus is on North American research methods. For instance, the book also identifies many of the most important PRO records available in large North American institutions, such as the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa.

Chapters in "Genealogical Research in England’s Public Record Office: A Guide for North Americans, 2nd Edition" include:

When To Use The PRO And Why
A Guide To The PRO’s Facilities (Including Hours Of Operation, Transportation Available, Nearby Overnight Accommodations, Etc.)
Using The PRO: Finding Aids
Emigration And Immigration
Other Records

Censuses 1841 to 1901
Birth, Death and Marriage records
Probate, Wills and Other Death Records
Military Records
Taxation
Association Oath Rolls, 1696 to 1697
Maps
Parliamentary Papers
Court Records

Local Record Offices of England and Wales
Useful Addresses
Historical County Boundaries
Worksheet for Getting Ready
Local Government Records
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
Index to PRO Record Groups

You will find a lot of information packed into this 164-page hardcover book. "Genealogical Research in England’s Public Record Office: A Guide for North Americans, 2nd Edition" retails for $22.50 (U.S. funds) plus appropriate shipping charges. You can order it from many bookstores if you specify ISBN 0-8063-1632-2. Most genealogy bookstores will have it in stock. You can also order it online.

New Brunswick Searchable Online Databases
The New Brunswick Provincial Archives has been accumulating a lot of information in digital format and making it available online. This can be a boon for anyone with New Brunswick ancestors. I know that because I spent some time on the Archives’ Web site this week looking for my New Brunswick ancestors.

The Web site has the following online archives, which can easily be searched:

• Index to Late Registration of Births, 1810-1904
• Index to County Birth Registers, 1801-1899
• Index to New Brunswick Marriages, 1887-1919
• Index to Death Certificates, 1920-1949
• Index to Death Registration of Soldiers, 1941-1947
• Index to Saint John Burial Permits, 1889-1919
• Irish Famine Database - Migration to New Brunswick: 1845 – 1852
• Hutchinson Directories 1865 – 1868
• Lovell Directory 1871
• Records Of Land Settlement In New Brunswick In The Period 1765-1900 (This database actually is at the University of New Brunswick Web site, but was produced in cooperation with the New Brunswick Provincial Archives.)

• Finding Aid for the Correspondence of the Provincial Secretary
• Finding Aid for New Brunswick Vital Statistics
• Finding Aid for Records of the Surveyor General of New Brunswick
• Guide to Biographies
• Guide to Family Histories

To access these databases and text files, go to: http://gov.nb.ca/archives/ols/ols.htm

My thanks to Sandra Devlin for telling me about this great resource.

The Shady Side Of The Family Tree
The Orange County (California) Register carried an interesting story this week about one genealogist’s discovery of black sheep in the family. To be sure, we all have them. I don’t know anyone who is descended only from pillars of the community; we all have a few unsavory characters hanging around the family tree. My opinion is that we should cherish these miscreants, as they are just as much a part of a person’s heritage as those who followed the social norms. Besides, they are a lot more fun to talk about at the family reunion.

Lori Davis found that she should have asked her grandfather more about his family before the gentleman died. Lori’s grandfather never talked about his childhood, and he never spoke about his mother. Now Lori has discovered why; her great-grandmother was a famous con artist. The article says that Lori feels regret that her grandfather lived through what he did and spent the rest of his life hiding it.

This is an interesting story. You can read it at: www.ocregister.com/living/geneal00623cci1.shtml

Do you also have a few black sheep in your family? I’ll bet you do. Now, go out and find them.

Home Pages Highlighted
The following is a list of some of the genealogy-related World Wide Web home pages that have been listed recently on www.rootscomputing.com:

GeneLux: Luxembourg-American Genealogy - This site is intended for people researching their Luxembourg ancestry, particularly in the Midwestern states of IA, IL, MN and WI: www.eskimo.com/~lisanne

A commercial service that produces large format paper family tree charts from GEDCOM files: http://familytreecharts.homestead.com/index.html

Maloney Homepage- To obtain details of MALONEY family: http://georgemaloney.homestead.com

St. Eve and Saint-Eve families as well as Field/s, Leidenheimer, Bridges, Clark, Anway, McConnell and Beal families. The Saint-Eves were from Lorraine, France and the Leidenheimers were from Deidesheim, Bavaria: www.familytreemaker.com/users/s/c/h/Judy-St-eve-Schor

If you would like to submit news, information or press releases for possible inclusion in future newsletters, send them to roots@compuserve.com. The author does reserve the right to accept or reject any articles submitted.

DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is being written and sent via e-mail at no charge. I expect to write one new issue on a more or less weekly basis. However, life sometimes interferes, and the need to earn a living may create an occasional delay.

COPYRIGHTS: The contents of this newsletter are copyright by Richard W. Eastman. You are hereby granted rights, unless otherwise specified, to re-distribute articles from this newsletter to other parties provided you do so strictly for non-commercial purposes. Please limit your re-distribution to one or two articles per newsletter; do not re-distribute the newsletter in its entirety. Also, please include the following words with any articles you re-distribute:

The following article is from Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter and is copyright 2000 by Richard W. Eastman. It is re-published here with the permission of the author.

Thank you for your cooperation.