12 May 2026
Ancestry lets users research their past, find their ancestors, and collaborate with others to share research and make richer discoveries.
What information does Ancestry have about non-Ancestry users?
There are two primary sources of information about non-Ancestry users:
1. User Content. This includes content users have uploaded to their family trees, such as photos, names, dates of birth, places, significant events, stories and other materials
2. Historical Records. This includes records Ancestry has obtained from third parties (e.g. records from archives or maintained by local authorities, such as birth, marriage or death records, records of military service, or census details) that may relate to living individuals, both users and non-Ancestry users.
Family Trees
Ancestry allows users to create family trees to display familial connections. This content is added by users during genealogical reasearch and is used to capture and share their discoveries.
As Ancestry is in the business of facilitating collaborative family history research, building family trees, and connecting communities, it considers the processing of the data of living people added by users on its Services to be in its legitimate interests.
Ancestry helps users protect living persons’ data through various controls:
Privacy by Default: When an Ancestry user adds a person to a tree, they indicate whether that person is living or deceased. Living people are private by default.
Visibility: Living people are only visible to the tree owner and people the tree owner shares the tree with as “editor” or whom the tree owner authorizes to be able to view that tree’s living people. All other users will see the living person labeled as “Private”. Information about living individuals (including non-users) may be visible if included in a public media gallery or if users choose to publish the information outside of their tree.
Tree Privacy: Ancestry provides users with the flexibility to set their family trees to either public or private. Public trees allow other users to collaborate and find shared ancestors. Users can also facilitate research by messaging one another or commenting on records.
Historical and Public Records
The vast majority of records on our Services relate to deceased individuals. However, some records may still contain information about living individuals; often, this information has already been made public by archives, government institutions, or other groups.
Similar to the data provided by Ancestry users through their family trees, Ancestry also relies on its legitimate interests to process personal data in records from archives and other sources. These records are often acquired by our content acquisition team, which purchases or licenses the rights to collect, hold, publish, and process archival content through Ancestry’s Services. Before we publish information, we consider a number of factors, including industry guidelines, rules, best practices, laws and regulations, and user needs, while ensuring we balance individuals’ interests, rights and freedoms against other interests.
Ancestry does not have non-Ancestry users' DNA in our AncestryDNA database. You must be a registered Ancestry user and have taken an AncestryDNA test for Ancestry to have DNA data about you.
For information about how to request deletion of information you find on our site about you or people in your household, click here.